IMF studies have found a negative correlation between income inequality and growth. While liberals have been quick to assume this is a cause-and-effect relationship, the truth is much more complicated.

Maybe the problem is with a developed cpuntry having a lot of blue-collar workers. This results in more income inequality, and the "solution" would be to get rid of these workers, not to pay white-collar workers less.
This is just one of the possible reasons for the correlation.

As you can see, I reject the notion that income inequality needs a solution.
Back to robots, I think it's crazy to think there are a limited number of jobs out there. One person speculated that computer have resulted in less people employed in affected industries than there were before that technology showed up. This may be true in this circumstance, but that's not necessisarily the case. Take photoshop for example. In the future, we could have millions of people creating digital art and contributing to the economy that way. Computer jobs are more than just computer programming, and there will always be opportunities to do more work, although the pay might be variable.

@krellin - The Rich keep excess cash in the lowest taxable form they can get. For example H. Ross Perot took his money from selling EDS to GM and put it into municipal bonds for years to avoid taxes until he finally started a new business years later after trying to become president. Most investment in stocks and bonds doesn't create jobs because it is only being exchanged to produce money for the seller. Only IPOs and secondary offerings that are specifically going to create new jobs and expand businesses do what you said.

The government can create jobs by direct hiring or spending on infrastructure. The Eisenhower Interstate Highway program created thousands of jobs building roads and making it more efficient for businesses to ship goods on the new roads. However the Reagan/Bush infrastructure program instead of expanding roads and repairing existing ones did mostly earmark construction like the Bridge to Nowhere that didn't provide improvements for businesses.

Companies employ tax accountants and lawyers to decide how to avoid paying taxes. That's why Apple issued bonds to pay a dividend instead of bringing cash back from overseas that it would have had to pay taxes. It's why the effective tax rate for corporations is so low. --- Or did you just climb out from under a bridge to troll?

The last scheme was buy an overseas company with cash that was already overseas and then shift the new merged business to that overseas country that had a lower tax rate. Before that it was create an overseas subsidiary to collect most profits in a low tax rate country. Or do you believe that most Microsoft research that led to patents was done in Ireland?

RAndomizer...the rich put their money to WORK moron. Good lord...get off your fucking Libtard talking points.

Do you honestly think that the rich have it in their mind to just hide cash somewhere to avoid taxes? NO, you blithering idiot. The money is INVESTED....that means it is in the stock market - funding companies, helping create and grow businesses....which CREATES JOBS.
You apparently are *woefully* ignorant of economics.

You ignorance of the stock market is clearly part of this. You DO realize that companies own their own stock...and they can buy it and sell it in order to produce revenues for the company, right? Oh...uh.....yeah....uh....

And regardless - let's say someone has worked their ass off all their life and accumulated wealth - WHO THE FUCK are you, or the government, to tell them that they are not entitled to keep and do with as they please the collective fruits of their labor.

Let's take two scenarios:
1. Poor old person, that made X unit of money over his life, but spent it all as soon as it came in and has no savings.
2. Rich old person, who ALSO made X unit os money over his life, but saved his money so that he could enjoy his old age in a style that he preferred.

YOU would take person 2. -- who is arguably the responsible person that was looking out for himself so as to NOT be a burden to society...and you would PUNSIH this person for being responsible.
And to person 1. -- who was a selfish asshole throughout his life, never caring about the future but always being self-indulgent -- and you would give this person some of the wealth of Person 2 as a reward for being irresponsible.

THAT is why you Libtards are so fucking disgusting, and why the Libtard policies are slowly destroying the global economy.

"Infrastructure" jobs are short-term, non-value added jobs. Filling a fucking pot-hole, or rebuilding a road that the Union labor built poorly to begin with is not value added. That is a financial DRAIN. And what do you want to do - pave over the entire nation?

Infrastructure is a COST.

As for tax loopholes that allow companies to hide taxes overseas -- that is a completely different topic. Bend Appl eover and fuck them if you want. Do the same to GE, who pays essentially no taxes.

But....then....when you start taxing the shit out of corporations, PLEASE do not come onto websip and start to bitch and complain about how expensive everything gets, becaus CORPORATIONS DON'T PAY TAXES. Consumer pay taxes, because product prices increase. And Employees pay corporate taxes, because wages and benefits are lowered to help cover the taxes.

When will you mental midgets understand the basic laws of reality in business economics.

YOu CANNOT tax the country into prosperity! But you CAN tax corporations out of business.

Remember when the government decided Smoking was BAD? What did they do? Hmmm....how did the government decide to get rid of smoking in society.

Hmmm...wait...it's on the tip of my tongue...uhhh....OH YEAH!!! They taxed the shit out of smoking!!! And the result of massive tax increases???? LESS SMOKING!!

So go ahead...tax the shit out of corporations and job producers....and then shut the fuck up when you are out on the street, broke and homeless because your company closed, or because the governement collapsed because they eventually ran out of tax payers to leach and went bankrupt (See "Greece")....

Morons....seirously....

How did a conversation about robots turn into one about the tax code?

Regardless this has given me a great new id ew a for a Sci-Fi Comedy show, Robot Accountants, coming to FOX this fall.

*idea

@randomizer, i can confirm that very little research is done in microsoft's Dublin offices. Though they do actually act as the european HQ for the purpose of cuspmer services. I've worked in the building, and it is rather nice. Don't know what you are saying about patents... But the Irish corporate tax rate was rather successful in attracting large multi-nationals to setup european headquarters here. And had a substantial effect on a rather small economy.

Oh, and to quote the CGP Grey video - 45% of current jobs are on the line for automation at this point, and all of them existed in one form or another 100 years ago.

That is, 45% of the workforce, or the 32 most common types of jobs, are not new, and already existed 100 years ago.

While a 45% unemployment rate would be drastically higher than the great depression... Even if the rate of job 'destruction' is slow, there is a large re-education cost, and a threat to an ever widening range of jobs.

So this will only get worse.

Ultimately we have a small number of options. For corporations with large numbers of employees, you could merge the role of share-holder and employee, so the only responsibility of the corporation is to pay profits to tue employees - that way wages no longer count as a cost - infact your company is doing better the more you spend on wages.

For a corporation of zero employees, you instead want to merge the roles of customer and shareholder. Thus profits are directed to the customers and the more you can profit the better...

That is effectively the method suggested by the above article. (Output of automated labour going to everyone - except it leverages the market system and customer choice the same effect we currently use)

Great news! 45% of the workforce is still engaged in old-school jobs that were basically the same 100 years ago. But cutting-edge advances in robotics will reduce that number substantially and allow more workers to participate in the modern economy.
I think it depends on how you look at it.

Smart business owners would advertise "we employ HUMANS", actually do so, and get many more customers who put their money where their mouth is. It's bad business to replace humans entirely with robots.

On a side note, i'm working right now full time at a landscaping company in my area. I mow lawns, do garden beds, trim etc etc and get paid a pretty decent 13 CAD/hour. I can tell you that no robot will ever take over that job. Not in the next 50 years. Nor will robots be able to pick grapes, prune grape vines, that is, any faster and efficiently than a human could.

Robots will make everything more efficient. Instead of labour used on jobs that can be easily done by robots, humans will do other jobs, and we'll be much more efficient.

Not to mention, that with robots, the manufacturing jobs that were outsourced to asian countries, will return to the USA and the developed world, only with robots instead of cheap labour. Its funny because the same people that are afraid of robots stealing jobs also oppose outsourcing.

ILN: Smart businesses have enough trouble getting people to buy local rather than imported, or ethical supply chains over sweat shops/conflict zone minerals, etc. What on earth makes you think people mostly choose ethical businesses? That market segment exists, but it isn't anything resembling a majority.

Still, I think that ILN touches on a point here. The USA won't suffer worst from automation. Think about the change in the world that would happen if the textile business was automated. Or the assembly of electronics. All those emerging market nations would suffer, and its likely that we'd be the beneficiaries - at least from a trade balance standpoint.

You can bet that China is thinking *very hard* about the electronics assembly problem. :-) But they are also very very clear about the goal being to make sure their citizens all have a minimum level of food, shelter, and work - because they know that if enough citizens don't have that, there *will be* a bloody revolution.

As per the point of the OP, if the USA simply automates a whole bunch of jobs (some of which are from overseas, but a lot of which aren't), and leaves a whole bunch of people with no work and no money... there's going to be an issue. Y'all have huge income inequality issues *already*, without adding more.

Simply saying "but people will just do something else" missing the point - people *can't* "just do something else" in the time frames likely to be required. They *can* do something else, but switching jobs and careers is not a magic "hey presto I can do a new thing now" button.

The point is that this automation is different.

Previous tech advances automated physical labout ( a lot of agriculture, and manufacturing jobs ) but left mental labour to humans. The current wave of automation will be replacing mental labour aswell ( leaving only jobs which require social skills, like psychologists, teachers, politicians, and... Em customer service?? Well a lot of customer service - like phone help lines, or checkouts in supermarkets, are currently being automated, but i will concede that there are certain advantages to having a human do talking to the customer...)

Even if current robots for picking grapes are 10 times slower, of they are 100 tomes cheaper than paying wages they become economically viable.

Non-routine mental tasks may be more difficult to automate, than say, routine mental tasks, but non-routine physical tasks - like driving a car, or hundreds of thousands of other jobs in transportation - are targets for automation.

This: www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/what-is-watson.html

BBC article about a domestic robot designed to do social tasks. www.bbc.com/news/technology-33360744

Very expensive and not going to replace any workers, but mobile phones were expensive in the 80s, and it wasn't until 20 years later that the cost dropped enough for them to become ubiquitous... This will hange the world, not today, this is just what we already have working today, this is just the start... (And i take back half of what i said about social jobs...)

I'll have to look it up, but there was an article I read on Japanese social robots. As far as robots interacting with humans, the Japanese are lightyears ahead of everyone else

This one example is a social robot developed by a french company, who then decided to market it in Japan; as they are perhaps a decade ahead of anyone else in accepting robots in the home (robots used in industry are commonplace among most 'developed' nations)