Bill Gates: ‘If a robot takes your job, then it should pay taxes’

One of the world's most technologically-minded (not to mention richest) people thinks that robots should be taxed just like their human counterparts.

The co-founder of Microsoft believes that if a robot replaces a human in doing a job, then that robot should be taxed at a similar level, with those taxes then being pumped forward into financing jobs in assisting the elderly or teaching schoolkids. Only a few days ago it was reported by Reuters that a similar EU robot tax was rejected, with the plan to take the money made from taxation to then be used in retraining the workers that the robots had replaced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nccryZOcrUg "Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed," Gates told Quartz. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d  think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level." "Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there," he added. "Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It’s OK." Clip via Quartz