A tax on robots or similar substitutes for humans, and a Universal Basic Income, solves many of the challenges of automation.

Sir, Guy Wroble writes: “As automation will target more expensive labour first, aside from a limited number of tech jobs to service the machines, humanity would appear to be on the road to becoming the hewers of wood and the haulers of water. Jobs which pay so little that it makes no sense to automate them. “Automation may lead to humans hewing wood” January 17.

Indeed that could happen, if we do not do anything about it. But we can! Tax all what substitutes for human jobs, and have those tax revenues help fund a Universal Basic Income payable to all.

That way we would not only level the field for humans to compete with robots and similar, but we would also make sure humans do not have to offer themselves to perform the chores that robots are most suited to do.

@PerKurowski