|
|
|
|
|
|
by dragonwriter
3364 days ago
|
|
|
> 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.) |
|
|
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).