Basic Income May Be Needed to Combat Robot-Induced Unemployment, Leading AI Expert Says
19th February 2016
If automation-induced unemployment becomes a problem (or if the chattering class can convince voters that it is a problem, which is a different thing entirely), then this is the obvious policy recommendation from those who look first to the government to solve every ill.
Of course, nobody will have the bad grace to mention that constantly increasing the legal ‘minimum wage’ merely encourages increased automation.
February 19th, 2016 at 10:49
What’s likely to happen is that the gov’t will start taxing robots on some “equivalent” basis to what humans would pay in taxes for the same production rate. (If there is one thing that governments are good at, it’s sucking up sources of revenue.)