Bill Gates has floated the idea of taxing robots which replace human workers. He said it in an interview (here) with Quartz, a media outlet owned by The Atlantic, and staffed by journalists from The Economist, the New York Times and other publications that Dirty Donald would label as fake news. They made a nice short video (here) to promote the piece, with Gates giggling at the end about the idea of paying more taxes. It's a neat idea, and has got a lot of people online very excited. It could help to pay for Universal Basic Income, which is also very exciting to a lot of people online. And it could slow down the pace of cognitive automation, although that isn't an aspect he is majoring on.

The short answer is yes. Most economists think the answer is no, because in the past automation hasn't caused lasting unemployment. They call it the Luddite Fallacy because the Luddites, the people who went around smashing up weaving machines during the Industrial Revolution, were wrong about the effect of automation – at least to the extent that they were making a broad economic argument. I think the economists are guilty of the Reverse Luddite Fallacy, which is to say that because automation hasn't caused lasting unemployment in the past it can't do so in the future. It's different this time because in previous rounds of unemployment machines have replaced our muscle jobs while in future rounds they're going to replace our cognitive skills.

The short answer is yes. Most economists think the answer is no, because in the past automation hasn't caused lasting unemployment. They call it the Luddite Fallacy because the Luddites, the people who went around smashing up weaving machines during the Industrial Revolution, were wrong about the effect of automation – at least to the extent that they were making a broad economic argument. I think the economists are guilty of the Reverse Luddite Fallacy, which is to say that because automation hasn't caused lasting unemployment in the past it can't do so in the future. It's different this time because in previous rounds of unemployment machines have replaced our muscle jobs while in future rounds they're going to replace our cognitive skills.