Well, there's this ugly problem (worse than my great-great-great grandfather's PR issues, since he was the inspiration for the novel Frankenstein) could have ever imagined: We're about to run out of jobs for humans at just about the same moment that we need to be creating jobs like crazy to put all these newly unemployed people back to work so they can pay taxes. The problem is amplified in this dandy Howard Hill piece "We Robot" which mentions the human-replacement problems in the auto industry (for one) and brings up the ugly question (once again, if you fire off some neurons) "Who really got bailed out"? The workers, or the machine owners? The reason this is so critically important to start thinking about is that ever since the Industrial Revolution got underway, there's been this notion that humans ought to be taxed, but not only should machines be taxed at lower rates, companies are allowed under tax laws to write down a machines' value over time to zero (in as little as one year under IRS Section 179, LOL). But human capital is not treated the same way. In fact, if humans were treated like most machines, they'd be written off in 10-year or less. Why, we'd be paid for our 'useful life and then go fishing. I suppose the wholesale firings that accompany depressions, like the one we're arguably now in, may be the functional equivalent, except we starve and no time for fishing. But it brings me to the larger question of "Shouldn't we be taking the machine output, which would be a form of production tax on machine owners so that workers who are displaced may be provided for?" http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm
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