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The idea of a guaranteed income for all has been floating around for centuries, its popularity ebbing and flowing with the passing tide of current events. While it is still considered by many to be a radical concept, proponents of a universal basic income (UBI) no longer see it only as a solution to poverty but as the answer to some of the biggest threats faced by modern workers: wage inequality, job insecurity – and the looming possibility of AI-induced job losses. Elon Musk, at the recent Bletchley Park summit, said he believed "no job is needed" due to the development of AI, and that a job can be for "personal satisfaction". Economist and political theorist Karl Widerquist, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar, sees it differently. "Even if AI takes your job away, you don't necessarily just become unemployed for the rest of your life," he says.

In 1979, an innovative two-minute TV commercial gave Britain a glimpse of the future. Choreographed to music from Rossini's Barber of Seville, hi-tech machines built the Fiat Strada. The tagline was "Handbuilt by Robots." Humans were nowhere to be seen in the Turin factory where the ad was shot, but the film crew knew where the people were: outside, on picket lines protesting the loss of their jobs. Fast forward nearly 40 years and "the robots are coming, they want to replace us, and there's nothing we can do to stop them" isn't the plot of the next season of Westworld, it's a real-world warning that's becoming louder with each new leap in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Both the technoprogressive enthusiasts and the head-in-the-sand reactionaries believe doomsayers are overstating the threat.

Both Microsoft's Bill Gates New York Mayor Bill de Blasio have called for a tax on job-stealing robots, according to a Wall Street Journal tax policy reporter: A robot tax could serve multiple purposes, slowing job-destroying automation while raising revenue to supplement shrinking taxes paid by human workers. It could take a few different forms. Lawmakers could limit or slow down deductions for businesses that replace humans with robots, or they could hit businesses with levies equivalent to the payroll taxes paid by employers and employees. The current employment picture in the United States has been reasonably good (only 3.5% unemployment in 2019) so the proposed robot tax is just an idea at present. But a downturn could turn the idea into a cause.

In all likelihood, your co-workers pay taxes. But what happens if your boss replaces them with sophisticated software or dexterous machines--ones that perform the same tasks for less money (at least over the long run) and contribute nothing in payroll taxes? One seemingly flip answer is starting to gain some attention: Just tax the robots. Bill Gates has called for a robot tax, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a plan for one in his short-lived presidential campaign. If the future means far fewer workers and far more machines, tax revenue could drop and the daily rhythms of steady employment could become erratic.

"to substitute, he claims, for the incomes lost to robots and artificial intelligence generally." However, it is not proven that the introduction of AI and robots will disadvantage workers so substantially.

A robot: less frightening than it looks. Now I have heard it all. The idea came out of Bill de Blasio just before he gave up his bid to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, but he is not alone. Other progressives have fastened on to the idea, as have several Silicon Valley business leaders. It has, in other words, acquired a life of its own.

In last week's recap, I recounted how Alec Ross, author and technology policy advisor, had speculated that robot design, development and manufacturing would be critical to future economic well-being worldwide. What I didn't share was some of the background he provided that calls into question whether United States is positioning itself to be a leader in the robotics industry and the impact robotics will have on U.S. manufacturing jobs going forward. John Hitch has authored two recent articles on the robotics industry--a July 17 article, Reconciling Robot-Induced Anxiety and Admiration and an August 14 article, Manufacturing Obscurity is a Fate Worse than the Robopocalypse. These articles provide detail on these two questions above, and I highly recommend you read them. Here is some of the information they present.

Critics of such an idea have, in the past, argued that any tax on a machine, be it a robot, a car or an AI tax, would be anti-business -- but then it would be stretching credibility to suggest Bill Gates is anti-business. "You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed of automation," said the co-founder of Microsoft. He warned: "You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once. If you want to do [something about] inequality… government's got a big role to play." There are multiple problems with the idea.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined Fox News' Tucker Carlson for a discussion on automation in the workforce and his new "robot tax." Far-left New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is getting less than 1 percent support in polls, wants to create a "robot tax" and a massive new government bureaucracy to slow the progress and innovation that have made America the world's economic powerhouse. The unpopular mayor is terrified of robots, computers with artificial intelligence and other advanced machines that will eventually be able to do things only people can do today, eliminating millions of jobs. He neglects to mention the obvious fact that technological advances also create new jobs – like auto workers replacing blacksmiths, airline pilots replacing stagecoach drivers, and photographers replacing portrait painters. Under de Blasio's proposed "robot tax," companies that replace jobs with automation would have to pay the equivalent of five years of payroll taxes for each employee whose job is lost, making cost-saving innovations far less attractive.