PATTERN RECOGNITION
TOBY SHAPSHAK: If robots are going to take humans’ jobs, they should also pay tax
Jobs will be lost as society becomes more digital. But what does this mean for income tax revenue?
If robots are going to take humans’ jobs, they should also pay tax. This is one of the peripheral, but important, conversations in the debate about the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on our jobs. There’s a lot of scaremongering about the impact of robots on jobs. It’s worth remembering the first time there was a wave of automation, when factories and the production line debuted in the 19th century.Manual labour was mostly done by skilled artisans, but the process of "deskilling" workers ultimately "substituted ... skills through the simplification of tasks", according to a 2013 report from the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin School. Summarising these changes, the authors note how "the deskilling process occurred as the factory system began to displace the artisan shop, and it picked up pace as production increasingly mechanised with the adoption of steam power. Work that had previously been performed by artisans was now decomposed into smaller, highly speciali...
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