Trump Tax Plan Gives Jobs Away to Robots and Will Increase Unemployment

Fantine

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Trump Tax Plan Gives Jobs Away to Robots and Will Increase Unemployment

If they want to create jobs, why are they incentivizing companies to automate?

It's a simple equation. Fewer workers means fewer consumers. Fewer consumers mean fewer products and fewer services purhased. Fewer products and fewer services purchased means less business for companies and less profits for shareholders---with the ultimate result of recession.

The European Union and South Korea are considering charging their employers payroll taxes for their robots--to help them cover Social Security and medical benefits for employees displaced by robots. This will help prevent their societies from imploding as greedy companies replace employees with machines. Our shortsighted Republicans in Congress are content to let society implode (as long as it doesn't happen before they are reelected). Contemptible.
The bill includes a provision called "Full and Immediate Expensing" that allows a company to deduct the cost of any new asset right away instead of when it sells the asset or as deductions depreciate over time. That means a company can take out a cheap loan, use it to purchase an expensive machine, and write it off immediately. Some economists argue that this could spur companies to favor automation over jobs and to invest in robots over people.

For example, if an employer had the option of hiring a worker and paying her $1 million over 10 years or buying a $1 million machine that will perform the same task, the machine ends up being cheaper because of the tax incentive.
 

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Fewer workers doesn't mean fewer consumers. People who stop being workers don't just vanish into thin air, they still need to eat, drink, they need to keep their houses and bodies clean and need to entertain and educate themselves.

What vanishes is the buying power of those people, though.
 
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FireDragon76

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More people on the dole, less buying power, I agree.

Maybe we'll all be massaging rich people and doing their nails in the future, until they have androids that can replace us.
 
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Larniavc

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Trump Tax Plan Gives Jobs Away to Robots and Will Increase Unemployment

If they want to create jobs, why are they incentivizing companies to automate?

It's a simple equation. Fewer workers means fewer consumers. Fewer consumers mean fewer products and fewer services purhased. Fewer products and fewer services purchased means less business for companies and less profits for shareholders---with the ultimate result of recession.

The European Union and South Korea are considering charging their employers payroll taxes for their robots--to help them cover Social Security and medical benefits for employees displaced by robots. This will help prevent their societies from imploding as greedy companies replace employees with machines. Our shortsighted Republicans in Congress are content to let society implode (as long as it doesn't happen before they are reelected). Contemptible.
But, but, when business owners save money they raise wages.

That’s why trickle down economics works.

Every. Single. Time.
 
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cow451

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More money for the shareholders and corporate CEO’s!!! Making America Great!!
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Trump Tax Plan Gives Jobs Away to Robots and Will Increase Unemployment

If they want to create jobs, why are they incentivizing companies to automate?

It's a simple equation. Fewer workers means fewer consumers. Fewer consumers mean fewer products and fewer services purhased. Fewer products and fewer services purchased means less business for companies and less profits for shareholders---with the ultimate result of recession.

The European Union and South Korea are considering charging their employers payroll taxes for their robots--to help them cover Social Security and medical benefits for employees displaced by robots. This will help prevent their societies from imploding as greedy companies replace employees with machines. Our shortsighted Republicans in Congress are content to let society implode (as long as it doesn't happen before they are reelected). Contemptible.

Pure speculation. It wouldn't matter what tax bill republicans came up with. They could give the dems everything they say they want and they'd still complain.
 
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I don't see what the tax plan has to do with this. Automation is a simple dollars and cents issue. I've been wondering about what would happen to the "worker" when robots take over since I was a kid in the 60's.

And here we are with robots/AI on the cusp of being able to replace every single job done by human beings. Even those requiring creativity. I don't know how it will play out, but the Luddites may be right this time.

 
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Pure speculation. It wouldn't matter what tax bill republicans came up with. They could give the dems everything they say they want and they'd still complain.

And no amount of tax incentives to industry will keep them from going for automation if it is possible.

We need to give up the fiction that giving kickbacks or tax incentives to businesses incentivizes them to care one whit about the workers.

In publically traded companies the ONLY people that I am aware of who are mandated by law to be taken care of are investors.
 
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I don't see what the tax plan has to do with this. Automation is a simple dollars and cents issue. I've been wondering about what would happen to the "worker" when robots take over since I was a kid in the 60's.

And here we are with robots/AI on the cusp of being able to replace every single job done by human beings. Even those requiring creativity. I don't know how it will play out, but the Luddites may be right this time.

Scary indeed. Although the "creative" part often turns out funnier than intended. Deep learning only goes so far. Markov chain texts are often hilarious! (Maybe creativity in the future will only be funny. It will spell and end to serious or depressing creative works. Just hilarity!)
 
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Scary indeed. Although the "creative" part often turns out funnier than intended. Deep learning only goes so far. Markov chain texts are often hilarious! (Maybe creativity in the future will only be funny. It will spell and end to serious or depressing creative works. Just hilarity!)
Yes. The video has a nice classical soundtrack that it reveals, in the end, is written by software. But, truth be told, it sounds like that "presentation music" created for just such purposes. I don't know how a piece of software would replace Taylor Swift, Philip Philips or even the Rolling Stones.

Then again, as the video points out, how many "Taylor Swift's" do we need?
 
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Yes. The video has a nice classical soundtrack that it reveals, in the end, is written by software. But, truth be told, it sounds like that "presentation music" created for just such purposes. I don't know how a piece of software would replace Taylor Swift, Philip Philips or even the Rolling Stones.

Then again, as the video points out, how many "Taylor Swift's" do we need?

I think the really cool part of deep learning and AI applications is to point up the inherent patterns we simple humans are so prone to. I used to wonder if there was ever going to be a point at which every single "acceptable" combination of musical notes that could ever be put together would be put together such that no new music could be possible.

How many ways can you play the notes in the pentatonic before the only differences between songs is "voicings" of the notes and chords?

(And the answer to the question of "how many Taylor Swifts do we need?" is less than 1? :) (I shouldn't say that, I honestly couldn't identify a Taylor Swift tune if my life depended on it. Lately I've been digging back into early 90's shoegaze. I go through phases where I need heavy synths and effected guitars and then a couple years later I'll reject all that.)
 
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