Continuous, aggressive innovation has been a key component of America's success since its founding over 200 years ago.  As such, the country's taxing authorities have historically gone to great lengths to encourage innovation through tax incentives, public private partnerships, etc.  That is, until now.

In a rather stunning Quartz interview a few weeks back, Bill Gates, who ironically made his fortune from innovation, proposed that automation should be taxed rather than incentivized.

Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment. It’s a striking position from the world’s richest man and a self-described techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in artificial-intelligence technology.

 

In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it.

 

“You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed” of automation, Gates argues

"We need to think about investments in our society that don’t exacerbate the wealth and income gaps that we already see today.  We don’t want to become a third-world country where there’s a big divide between the very rich and very poor."