Should the tax on robots be high or low?

Sir, John Thornhill writes that Carl Benedikt Frey’s “The Technology Trap” informs us that “the number of robots in the US increased by 50 per cent between 2008 and 2016, each of them replacing about 3.3 jobs” “The return of the Luddites” July 13, 2019.

Those who are so replaced must surely have been generating some non-wage labour costs, like social security, that robots don’t. Therefore I frequently pose a question that, with the exception of some Swedes, no one wants to give me a definite answer to. It is:

Should we tax robots low so they work for us humans, or high so that we humans remain competitive for the jobs?

In an Op-Ed from 2014 titled “We need decent and worthy unemployments” I wrote: “The power of a nation, and the productivity of its economy, which so far has depended primarily on the quality of its employees may, in the future, also depend on the quality of its unemployed, as a minimum in the sense of these not interrupting those working.”

And over the years I have become convinced that in a universal basic income, large enough to help us out of bed to reach up to what is available, and low enough to keep us from staying in bed, lies our best chances to find the basic social stability we need to avoid societal breakdown,.

The financing of that UBI could include that those who exploit data on us citizens shared with us part of their ad revenues, a high carbon tax, and perhaps taxing robots and AI (though I do not know with how much)

PS. I case you wonder why some Swedes answered the question that has primarily to do with the existence in Swedish of the magical word “lagom”, meaning something like not too much not too little but just right. J

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2017/02/here-some-disorderly-lose-cannon.html

@PerKurowski

Productivity, real salaries, employment rates, GDP should consider the increased consumption of distractions during work hours

Sir, Erik Brynjolfsson (and Andrew McAfee) writes: “If machine learning is already superhuman, why did we not see it in productivity statistics earlier? The answer is that its breakthroughs haven’t yet had time to deeply change how work gets done” “Machine learning will be the engine of global growth” July 27.

That is true, but we also need to realize that we have not done yet measured the effect of all the increased consumption of distractions during working hours.

In Bank of England’s “bankunderground" blog we recently read: “With the rise of smartphones in particular, the amount of stimuli competing for our attention throughout the day has exploded... we are more distracted than ever as a result of the battle for our attention. One study, for example, finds that we are distracted nearly 50% of the time.”

And on a recent visit to a major shop in the Washington area, thinking about it, I noticed that 8 out of the 11 attendants I saw were busy with some type of activity on their cellphones, and I seriously suspect they were not just checking inventories.

The impact of that on productivity, with less effective working time is being put into production, could be huge.

Also, going from for instance a 10% to a 50% distraction signifies de facto that full time or paid by the hour employee’s real salaries have increased fabulously.

And what about the real employment rate if we deduct the hours engaged in distractions? A statistical nightmare? Will we ever be able to compare apples with apples again?

And how should all these working hours consumed with distractions be considered in the GDP figures?

@PerKurowski

Those who sell us a universal basic income as a total solution, could just be wanting for it to fail

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Basic income or basic jobs?” June 29. The theme has become more fashionable because of robots and artificial intelligence, but the lack of jobs is not a new concern.

In 2003 in an Op-ed I wrote: “There’s a hint of all coming to a standstill in the theory about how globalization will optimize the world economy, by ensuring that merchandise will always be produced at the lowest marginal cost. What good does it do us to have products where the cost of the labor component gets smaller by the minute, if workers can’t buy the very products they produce?”

I ended that in jest with “Friends, let’s give one another jobs, scratching each other’s backs—paying each other good salaries of course.”

In 2012, while I was still not censored in Venezuela, in another Op-Ed titled “We need decent and worthy unemployments” I began it with: “What politician does not speak up for the need to create decent and well paid jobs for young people? But, if that's not possible, and the economy is not able to deliver that on its own ... What on earth do we do?”

In search of the answer I there asked: “Which is better: educating for a source of employment likely to be absent and therefore only create frustration, or educate for unemployment, and suddenly perhaps reaching, when on that route, the pleasant surprise of some jobs?”

Therefore Sir, in the choice between a basic income and a basic job, I clearly go for the first. The waste that could result, especially in uncertain times like these to develop guaranteed jobs, would surely be too big.

But that does not mean I consider that a Universal Basic Income either can or should be designed to satisfy all needs. For the time being it should just be a tool to help people get out of bed and reach up to whatever job opportunities might be around.

How much? Start with little. For instance, if there are pressures to increase the minimum wage $3 per hour then, for a fulltime 160 hour per month that signify $480. So why not start a UBI at that level and let time tell us where it can go? The additional demand that could be generated will, at existing salary levels, generate many jobs too.

What I most fret though are the redistribution profiteers. Concerned with seeing the value of their franchise erode, they might sell UBI’s promises excessively, both in amounts and purpose, so as to make the whole idea of a social dividend collapse, in order for them to get back in the saddle again. It behooves us all to stop them.

@PerKurowski

Universal Basic Income seems to be the most neutral and efficient tool to handle the unknown upheavals the use of artificial intelligence and robots will bring.

Sir, Rana Foroohar writes: “A McKinsey Global Institute report out on Wednesday shows that, while digitalisation has the potential to boost productivity and growth, it may also hold back demand if it compresses labour’s share of income and increases inequality.” “Why workers need a ‘digital New Deal’” February 19.

That sure seems to make the case for a Universal Basic Income, a Social Dividend, both from a social fairness angle and from the perspective of market efficiency.

To preempt that really unknown challenge at hand, Foroohar proposes something she names “the 25 percent solution” based on how Germany tackled an entirely different problem, the financial crisis. What it entails makes me suspect it could risk reducing the growth and productivity that could be achieved, and waste so much of the resources used to manage the consequences, so that only 25 percent, or less, of the potential benefits of having artificial intelligence and robots working for us would be obtained.

I worry sufficiently about a possible new Chinese curse of “May your grandchildren live with 3rd class robots and dumb artificial intelligence”; to also have to add “May your grandchildren have to serve the huge debt derived from technocrats defending your generation from artificial intelligence and robots.

Sir, I had more than enough of besserwissers trying to defend us and when doing so causing much more harm. Like when regulators, full of hubris, promised “We will make your bank system safer with our risk weighted capital requirements for banks”.

http://myubi.blogspot.ca/2017/01/my-universal-basic-income.html

@PerKurowski

The windows for poverty reduction will shrink dramatically, as robots and automation help bring back to developed countries the jobs lost to poorer ones.

Sir, Ben Bland writes: “Automation in Bangladesh may not make sense because you still have to ship but, if you make in the US, it makes more sense because there’s no [import] duty, no shipping, you’re closer to the customer and there are shorter lead times,” said Mr Rajan. “March of the robots stalls as clothes maker Crystal backs human workers” January 2.

What can I say? Should those robots working in the US share a moment of silence for those poor Bangladesh workers they will be substituting for?

https://perkurowski.blogspot.ca/2017/02/here-some-disorderly-lose-cannon.html

@PerKurowski

Our best hope for a decent and affordable adult social care must be minimizing the intermediaries’ takes, whether these are private or public

Sir, Diane Coyle when discussing the possibilities and need for organizing for instance adult social care, and thereto taking advantage of new methods to connect demand and supply and as exemplified by Uber, expresses concern for “the treatment and status of workers in platform public services (although it is not as if these are high-status jobs at present)” “Algorithms can deliver public services, too” December 19.

What’s missing though in that good analysis, is not having contemplating additional tech advances. For example Uber wants to buy self driven cars, in order to get the complications of human drives out of their way, but without realizing that consumers might at one point take direct contact with those cars, in order to get Uber out of the way.

The same will happen for workers in public services, though of course the increased demand for adult social care should help to keep up the demand for many of them. But, even in this case who knows? If you think of yourself as an older person soiled with your own feces, what’s currently is delicate referred to as an “accident”, who would you feel most comfortable with cleaning you, a not too human 1st class robot or a human? 

Sir, the way our generation, and governments have gone on a debt binge, to anticipate current consumption, there will come a time for a reckoning. If we do not find ways to minimize the intermediaries’ take, we will not afford the basic services we need and want.

Of course intermediaries are workers too… and that is why even for them we need to create decent and worthy unemployments.

@PerKurowski

What does going from a 10% to a 50% level of distraction signify for full-time employees’ real salaries?

Sir, Sarah O’Connor writes “Males in well-paid full-time employment, earning 2.5 times the median wage, are now working slightly longer hours on average than two decades ago, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank.” “Robots will drive us to rethink the way we distribute work” November 29.

In Bank of England’s “bankunderground" blog we recently read: “With the rise of smartphones in particular, the amount of stimuli competing for our attention throughout the day has exploded... we are more distracted than ever as a result of the battle for our attention. One study, for example, finds that we are distracted nearly 50% of the time.”

So if 50% of the time is now spend being distracted, and since those not employed full time are not equally remunerated for distractions, that of “earning 2.5 times the median wage”, could de facto be a serious understatement.

Sir, just think about what going from for instance a 10% to a 50% distraction signifies to full time employees’ real salaries. Fabulous increases!

PS. And what is its impact on productivity in terms that less effective working time is being put into production?

PS. Or what would the real employment rate be if we deduct the hours engaged in distractions? A statistical nightmare? Will we ever be able to compare apples with apples again?

PS. And how should all these working hours consumed with distractions be considered in GDP figures?

PS. Robots will not only drive us to rethink the way we distribute work. It also forces us to think about how to create decent and worthy unemployments.

@PerKurowski

If chefs cannot obtain effective intellectual protection for their recipes, how can they beat robots armed with AI?

Sir, Sarah O’Connor writes: “The risks to workers from ever smarter computers are clear, but the opportunities will lie in maximising the value of their human skills. For some people, such as talented chefs, the battle is already won.” “Machines do not have to be the enemy” November 1.

Oh boy, is she not a romantic? How on earth will individual chefs survive against robots and AI, unless it is for those few the 1% of the 1% is able and willing to pay for their human artisan cuisine creations protected by patents?

That “In most jobs, people combine cognitive skills with other human abilities: physical movement; vision; common sense; compassion; craftsmanship… that computers cannot match”, that unfortunately sounds like wishful thinking.

Much better is it if we accept that robots and AI can supplant us humans, in way too many ways, and instead look for ways how they should be able to work better for all humanity. And in this respect she is right, "machines are not the enemy".

I say this because since many years I have held that we do need to prepare decent and worthy unemployments, in order to better confront a possible structural unemployment, and without which our social fabrics would break down completely. Capisci?

That might begin by taxing the robots so at least humans can compete on equal terms.

Of course a totally different world might be out there in the future, but I can’t but to stand firmly on my western civilization’s stepping-stones, those that got me to where I am.

@PerKurowski

An all out war against inequality would be extremely harmful to us all.

Sir, Tim O’Reilly writes: “Clayton Christensen’s, “law of conservation of attractive profits” holds that once one thing becomes commoditised, something else becomes valuable.” And that “Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, noted that ‘if you want to understand the future, just look at what rich people do today’. “People power, not robots, will overcome our challenges” October 20.

But I ask, does that not require a strong supply of rich and unequally wealthy, in order to power that demand for the new, that which majorities never generate? And, if so, does that not put a dent on the argument of: “the fundamental question of our economy today is not how to incentivise productivity, but how to distribute its benefits”?

Sir from this perspective the current all out war against inequality could be extremely harmful for all. For instance, as I have, unanswered, often tweeted to Mr. Thomas Piketty “Visit the Museum of Louvre in your Paris and try to figure out how much of it would have existed, had it not been for extreme inequality.”

And O’Reilly, as a source of jobs refers to that “there is the looming spectre of climate change”. Indeed but who is going to pay for the fight against it? If government takes on debts to fight climate change, who will volunteer to repay those debts tomorrow, whether we are successful or not? No one!

That is why I have argued so much in favor of creating a whole new generation of social incentives, which could help get the world to work in the same direction on at least some important issues.

For instance, if there was a huge carbon tax, which revenues did not go to the redistribution profiteers but were shared out equally among all citizens, then we could link up the fight against climate change with the fight against inequality, without affecting the remaining societal incentive structure… that which helps to create the inequality we need.

PS. And please never forget, just in case there will not be enough jobs tomorrow, to think about how we can create decent and worthy unemployments.

@PerKurowski

I am the grandfather of two Torontonian girls. Do I like Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs? I love it… as long as

Sir, as a father of two Torontonians, and grandfather of other two Torontonians, it is of course with much interest I read Leslie Hook’s “Toronto offers Alphabet downtown land to practice designs for cities of future” October 19.

I do love that "Quayside" project… subject to:

It shoots for the most intelligent artificial intelligence and the smartest robots, as I would hate my granddaughters to have to surround themselves with half-baked artificial intelligence and 2nd class robots.

It allows for some here-you-can-totally-lose-yourself free from artificial recognition space to my granddaughters, in order for them to be able to find themselves, and all is not Big-Brother-watches you space.

It provides some absolutely-nothing-spots that guarantee my granddaughters to be able to experience, quite often, that boredom so essential for creativity and thinking.

It does not leave in its wake a huge Torontonian debt to be serviced by the grandchildren of my granddaughters.

Alphabet splits, at least 50% 50%, with Toronto, all profits that could be generated by all patents resulting from inventions and experiences obtained during the Sidewalk Labs project.

PS. And of course as long as it duly considers the possibility or rising water levels.

@PerKurowski

Canada needs a Universal Basic Income, 1st class robots and the smartest artificial intelligence, and to be daring

Sir, as a Venezuelan I am so lucky and so grateful for having two of my daughters and my two granddaughters living in Canada; and so of course I gave special attention to Tyler Brûlé’s “My plan to make Canada great again” September 31.

Except perhaps for that of “some form of national service with both defence and civilian functions”, and which because of my Swedish connections rang a bell with me, his other proposals left me quite indifferent.

I would instead suggest the following three things.

1. To prepare itself for the possibility of structural unemployment that could cause a breakdown of social order. This will probably require the introduction of a modest Universal Basic Income, a social dividend, and not paid by taking on more debt.

2. To gather all possible brain power in order to guarantee that future Canadians live surrounded and served by 1st class robots and the smartest artificial intelligence possible. Thinking of mine being dependent on anything lesser is just too horrible.

3. To immediately get rid of the risk weighted capital requirements for banks. These have banks staying away from financing the “riskier” future, like SMEs, and just keeping to refinancing the “safer” past, or basements in which to live. Risk taking is the oxygen of any development. God, make Canada daring!

PS. On Bombardier the following was my pro-Nafta tweet: “The fundamental question: Would Boeing build better airplanes in the future with or without competition from Bombardier? Keep the pressure!”

@PerKurowski

New office habitats, promoting communal discussions, will force robot headhunters to consider social skills much more

Sir, John Gapper when discussing new open space offices that are intended to intensify creative communications writes that “companies should start by recognising what their employees fear losing” and among this, is obviously “privacy”. “Tech utopias drive workers to distraction” September 14, 2017

But the need for privacy is not only based on a wish of being alone but quite often much more on the wish to avoid some. In this respect it must be expected that social skills will be much more important when robots or artificial intelligence evaluates candidates in the future, because you cannot risk having absolute bores or pain-in-the-ass employees roaming around freely.

Evaluating human social skills? Now that’s a new challenge for artificial intelligence. I wonder what Watson has to say about it? Perhaps, a test-period in which all co-workers could use a point system to evaluate candidates? Would such discriminatory procedures be politically acceptable?

Sir, do your current headhunters discriminate candidates based on their social skills?

PS. How will robot recruiters treat their human ex colleagues they left without jobs? 

@PerKurowski

More intelligent but less uncontrollable, or dumber and more controllable robots, that is the real tough question

Sir, you write “some researchers have called for greater “robot transparency” — safeguards to ensure that humans can always grasp what the most sophisticated machines are doing, and why… Robots can help people with their work and unleash social and economic benefits. But they must be trusted, or the humans will vote to take back control”, “Intelligent robots must be trusted by humans” August 5.

Sir, what do you prefer, more intelligent but less uncontrollable or dumber and more controllable robots?

What are we to do if controlling our intelligent robots makes these weaker than those of our future enemies, whoever these will be?

I ask this because the revised version of that Chinese curse that holds "may your children live in interesting times", could very easily be, may your children lived surrounded by 3rd class robots and dumb artificial intelligence. 

So even if “The era in which robots might redesign themselves constantly and advance beyond human understanding, is far into the future” their education, like that of the humans, might very well start in quite early childhood. 

http://perkurowski.blogspot.se/2017/02/here-some-disorderly-lose-cannon.html

@PerKurowski

Those profiteering on the employed, moneywise or politically, make us ignore, to our peril, the unemployed.

Sir, Kiran Stacey and Anna Nicolaou report on “Emerging nations in South Asia and beyond are pinning their development hopes on creating millions of low-paid manufacturing jobs over the next decade. Advances in automation threaten to derail the plan.”, “Stitched up by robots”, July 18.

And Rajiv Kumar an economist and founder of the Pahle India Foundation says: “Robotics and artificial intelligence are the next revolution. They are going to be more disruptive than any of the revolutions we have seen in the past — steam, electricity, the assembly line or computers — because they are going to replace not just routine but complex mental functions. The fear is that our so-called demographic dividend could become a demographic nightmare.”

Absolutely! In 2003 I already wrote about the possible need for sitting around in a great human circle, scratching each other backs, and paying good money for the service

And in 2012, more desperate, I called out that “We need worthy and decent unemployments”

Currently there are too much resources wasted, dedicated to trying to generate employments, and too little trying to make unemployment socially livable. Why? Might it be because the employed have more resources with which to pay their defenders?

We must do something, perhaps like a universal basic income, before social order breaks down. Reconstructing social order is so much harder. I as a Venezuelan should know.

@PerKurowski

Had our current bank regulators been instructed by robots, we might not be in this mess

Sir I refer to Jeevan Vasagar’s “My first robot” July 13.

Why do I argue the possibility indicated in the title? Because perhaps robots could have been able to help their students to shake off sentimentalities and primal emotions a bit more, and taught for instance our regulators that what is risky for banks, is not what they also intuitively could feel to be risky to our banks, but quite the opposite.

What is fervently believed safe, like something with an AAA rating, is what can cause banks to generate excessive and dangerous exposures; on the contrary, what is believed risky, as something rated below BB-, is what bankers won’t touch with a ten feet pole.

But what did the regulators educated by humans do? In Basel II they assigned a risk weight of 20% to what is AAA rated, and one of 150% to the below BB- rated.

And so we would not ended up with a 2007-08 crisis caused by an excessive exposure to AAA rated bonds and sovereigns like Greece; and we would not be suffering a slow response to all QE and low interest stimuli, caused by the lack of loans to “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs.

@PerKurowski

Do we want to settle for working or middle class robots? I want the 1% top ones to work for my grandchildren

Sir, Sarah O’Connor while discussing the issue of jobs, for humans or robots, sensibly concludes that it is not “the routine jobs” taken over by robots that should bother us but “the basic stuff — homes, security, prospects — that we lost along the way” “The middle class is not shrinking as much as it thinks” July 11.

O’Connor brings up an interview from a 1974 book “Working” written by social historian Studs Terkel. In it a steelworker says: “I want my kid to be an effete snob . . . If you can’t improve yourself, you improve your posterity. Otherwise life isn’t worth nothing.”

I sure agree with this steelworker’s general concept, but, if my grandchildren must turn into effete snobs, I hope it is not because they have been replaced by some low or middle class robots, but by the 1% absolutely best ones… or the smartest ever artificial intelligence.

Sir, it should be clear that the better the robots that work for us the more they could produce for us. The marginal contribution of robots that substitutes for bank tellers must surely be less than that of robots that substitutes for bank CEOs.

Just as an example, let us suppose current bank regulations had been carried out not by Basel Committee technocrats, but by some smart artificial intelligence. Then the 2008 crisis and the ensuing slow growth would never have happened. Mr. AI would of course first have looked at what causes major bank crisis and so determine that excessive exposures to something ex ante perceived as risky, never ever did. He would also have understood that allowing banks to multiply with different leverages the net risk adjusted margins, would completely distort the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

So what can we do? I would say first to make sure to keep the competitive pressure up on robot manufacturers. If we increase minimum wages for humans and do not begin taxing what the robots produce, we will not get the best robots we want.

An updated Chinese curse would be: “I wish your grandchildren live attended by 3rd class robots and dumb artificial intelligence.” And Sir, I would hate for that to happen to my grandchildren, because of something that I did or did not do.

Of course then we would come to the very delicate issue of how do we redistribute robot and automation productivity to humans. That is going to be awfully contentious. The only thing that occurs to me, before social cohesion breaks down, is to being by trying out a universal basic income.

That UBI should start out low and be very carefully designed. That is so because an UBI would become de-facto the robot that substitutes for the current redistribution profiteers, and so these would love to see it fail.

@PerKurowski

Regulatory risk aversion exposes our Western civilization to the risk of a “Mom, dad, you move down to the basement!”

Claire Jones writes on Alexandru saying: “Out of every 10 of my friends, only one works. It’s not a good situation for my generation,” Alex says. He and many of his friends still live at home with their parents. “When I talk to them about the past it sounds better. They all had a job and the opportunity to have a family.” “Temporary fortunes” July 6.

And Ms Bellieni “lives with her young child and husband, who also does many temporary jobs, in a property that belongs to his parents. “Otherwise we couldn’t make it”

Banks are allowed to hold much less capital when financing houses than when financing SMEs and entrepreneurs, as regulators think the former is much safer for the bank than the latter. As a result banks can earn much higher risk adjusted returns on their equity financing houses than financing “the risky”.

But since SMEs and entrepreneurs are job creators par excellence, could these regulations create an excess of basements in which the unemployed or underemployed young can live with their parents, and a substantial lack of jobs?

Mario Draghi, the Chair of the Financial Stability Board and his ECB officials clearly do not see this as a problem, hey they might not even see it as a distortion. That could be since like overly worried nannies they are totally focused on avoiding bank crises, and do not care one iota about how banks do their job in the in-betweens.

Sir, the younger generations, squeezed by this anti Western civilization value of risk aversion, and an increased loss of jobs to robots and automation, could at some point become sufficiently enraged so as to say… “Mom and dad, you move down to the basement, it is our turn to live upstairs!”

Note: Not the first time: 2009: "Please free us from imprudent risk-aversion and give us some prudent risk-taking"

@PerKurowski

What’s wrong with having the best robots work for you, if you know how to tax them correctly?

Sir, Gillian Tett writes: “Robots will be the real winners if US president goes ahead with curbs on steel imports” June 30. Of course! As I wrote to her and you in January “does Ms. Tett really need researchers from McKinsey to wake her up on what robots or automation could signify to jobs in general… is this really new news?”

And with respect to Trump’s announcement on tariffs, in January I tweeted “Beware robot manufacturers might lobby President Trump for higher tariffs and minimum wages” and linked there to a letter to you titled “The real winners of President Trump’s animosity towards cars built in Mexico could be robot manufacturers”

But, on the other hand, what’s wrong with having the best robots working for you, taxing these, and paying out a universal basic income to all? Because what we do need though, in time, before social cohesion breaks down, are some worthy and decent unemployments.

Now, if end up with 3rd class robots and dumb artificial intelligence doing most work, then we would really be in deep shit.

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2017/02/here-some-disorderly-lose-cannon.html

PS. Would the recent US election have taken the same route if that “fascinating recent paper by economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo shows, American industry has been replacing workers with robots on a startling scale in recent years, particularly in sectors such as car manufacturing” had appeared in 2016 or earlier instead of in March 2017.

PS. Sir, do you really think you are behaving appropriately shutting me up, just because you have to be careful with some big-weak-egos of some prima donnas?

@PerKurowski

What causes more inequality, or feelings of poverty, some CEOs’ obscene high salaries, or some prices, like those of Viagra?

Sir, I refer to David Crow’s “Cost of Viagra increases 27% as Pfizer raises US drug prices” June 3.

I have no idea why but my doctor has ordered me a different brand, so I am not a user of Viagra. That said it was astonishing to read that one single Viagra pill is now $73.85. That price must surely only be possible because of the official protection of intellectual property rights.

There should be a difference between the protections of a pharmaceutical industry, so that it can afford develop new medicines, and the protection of an extortion racket. As is, 10 Viagra pills would, at this price, represent a fairly decent monthly Universal Basic Income.

In a world in which so many prices are going down-down-down, among others because of automation and robots, can we afford to impact this way those who have to earn less and less and less income, or stay more at home, only because of automation and robots?

Perhaps Trump, instead of thinking of building up Mexican walls, should be thinking about tearing down some intellectual property protection walls. Open ended ones, like those that allowed “Martin Shkreli to raise the price of an Aids medicine from $13.50 to $750 a pill, reflects very badly on the state and governance of our society.

About a decade ago I wrote an Op-Ed in which I held that it was not logical that profits earned by means of protected intellectual property, were taxed at the same rate than those profits obtained from competing naked in the market. That argument is still valid, especially if those extra tax revenues become tax neutral, by feeding monthly UBIs.

PS. In the same vein, now we perhaps have to add a proposal on that profits generated with the use of robots, should be taxed higher than profits generated with the help of humans.

PS. Some years ago a friend, wanting to launch little-known-me as a candidate for the presidency of Venezuela, what a "friend", suggested a populist campaign based mostly on “Free Viagra for everyone”. He argued that would have more impact that my promises of sharing out all net oil revenues directly to all Venezuelans. He might have a point.

@PerKurowski

Nations need unions that represent the unemployed and to get a small universal basic income going, before it's too late

Sir, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, interviewing Laurent Berger writes: “The leader of France’s largest trade union has warned Emmanuel Macron not to rush labour market reforms as the country’s new president kick-starts negotiations over a bill seen as crucial to revamping the eurozone’s second-biggest economy.The warning is a reminder of the labour relations minefield awaiting the pro-business president” “Macron warned by union leader not to rush reform” May 24.

That evidences how much France and all other nations also need unions that represent the unemployed, in order to create some equilibrium among the forces that influence labor politics.

And of course, setting up a universal basic income system, starting it with a small amount, in France perhaps €150 per month, would also begin to open up the roads to that new society in which robots and automation seem to create structural unemployment.

As I have opined since some years we do need decent and worthy unemployments... before its too late.

http://myubi.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-universal-basic-income.html

@PerKurowski