[parennoob]

> Robots are easy to demonize in the US

You can't demonize robots, they are non-living. If anyone is being demonized, it will the corporations who are moving from human to automated labor in order to cut costs. If 670,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 have been shifted from humans to robots, it seems only fair to point that out.

> None of these publications ever run with a solution to the problem.

Probably because it's hard and involves ideas like guaranteed basic income and 'robot taxes' that are very unlikely to be popular in the US due to social attitudes. Perhaps such articles will lead to the change of those attitudes.

[killjoywashere]

How do you impose a "robot" tax? Do I get taxed every time a neural net tarts up a photo on my Nexus?

I'd say the real problem is a massive defect in what we imagine the goals of education should be. I read a novel once, I can't remember the name, but basically the galaxy-wide standard for being considered an adult us building your own spacesuit.

[dragonwriter]

> How do you impose a "robot" tax?

Step 1: tax all income equally (not flat rate, just not favoring particular forms), rather than having disfavorable taxation on labor (which basically amounts to a "robot tax subsidy".)

Step 2: if step 1 isn't enough, and you need to encourage hiring human labor more than eliminating the tax disincentive does, provide favorable tax treatment for labor income. (Which isn't exactly a robot tax, but has the same practical effect between robots and human labor.)

[Arizhel]

I don't think that will do what you're hoping.

I do agree, taxes on labor income should be lower than capital gains, rather than higher as it is today. But the division is between those who own capital and those those who don't. The lower capital gains tax favors those who make money by investing, rather than producing. Laborers are producers, but so are manufacturing companies. A person who buys himself a robot or two and produces more with it is more productive, but he's still going to pay the labor tax rate, not the capital gains rate.

IMO, the answer to taxation is to tax capital gains highly (significantly higher than labor), and also have very strong progressive tax rates for both labor and capital gains. So, some laborer saving his money in an IRA will (eventually, when he withdraws it) pay taxes on the capital gains, but not that much because he probably didn't save that much anyway. Some laborer investing a few $k into some stock and doubling his money will pay higher taxes on that gain, but again not that much because it's still not that much money. A billionaire making a huge gain in stocks OTOH will pay a much higher tax rate on that gain, and a lot overall in taxes. A millionaire who owns a privately-held manufacturing company will pay a much higher rate than one of his laborer employees, however he won't pay as much as a millionaire who just lives off of investments (unless he sells that company).

[mjevans]

How long did you have to live within the space suit and what was the test environment like?

Did any tasks have to be performed with the suit worn?

Was there a bonus for including a "head" in the suit, at least for the shorter term functions?

-

For a generally less risk filled and short term exposure environment, a skin tight pressure suit with a helmet might work out. I recall reading about such a suit in one short story, but I don't know if an actual engineer has commented on it. It could be useful as an emergency life support suit.

[parennoob]

> How do you impose a "robot" tax? Do I get taxed every time a neural net tarts up a photo on my Nexus?

It would have to be a balancing act. My guess is "probably not", because mass-producing modified photos wasn't a big source of jobs done by humans in the past.

Manufacturing industries where you could show a direct "1 robot replaced these 200 humans" causal relationship would (hypothetically) be the ones to be taxed.

[avmich]

That's a good question. We'll have to talk about it - may be it doesn't have an obvious solution. May be we can start with taxing only robots which are employed commercially and not for purposes like photos on Nexus.

[Kalium]

No, you just get taxed every time you use google for a phone number instead of calling information.