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That's the rationale for the estate tax. It makes sense, on the surface. Why should some trust fund baby inherit millions of dollars that he never earned? Let the government take that money, and redistribute it to other people who didn't earn it... or something like that.
The problem is, some of these rich people aren't really rich. A lot of small and mid-size businesses were founded and run by very hard working families. When grandpa dies, the obvious wish is to bequeath the business on a child or multiple children, to keep it going.
Unfortunately, the estate tax used to be pretty savage; it did not discriminate between an idle rich person and a business worth a million or more yet whose employees were only middle class, and it caused a lot of such businesses to go belly up. Really unfair.
That is why I have to disagree about the estate tax being a fair and valid tax. It taxes people for dying, for Pete's sake. They already tax us for living and breathing and having children and buying cars and just about everything else we do in life; isn't that enough?
Or distribute it to research and development so that these tool bags can continue to sip drinks in their luxury without worrying about war lords rolling tanks in and blowing their heads off because they are useless lay abouts.
If the USA suddently just let the military go to shambles (including all the tech) there would be alot of spoiled rich people fliping out and throwing money at the govt to save them, they are useless hypocrites who are lucky we protect them.
In this article, Elon Musk of Tesla states that in the future that robots will take your jobs and the government will give you a monthly paycheck. There will be some that are given higher statuses if they have the skillsets to program and build robots but the rest of the population will have to live on government handouts.
its partly true plus, he's bias?
Robots cant think and ultimately they just provide a service to eliminate overhead costs aka operations department. So any1 in operations is in trouble, but front mid-office are OK all they have to do is learn how to use new tech. Truckers within the next 10 -20 years may be extinct sadly? Automotive delivery trucks are actually in testing stage US and currently "Live" in some parts of Japan. Yes, trucks that drive themselves look it up interesting read. Uber is currently in process of creating cars that drive themselves as well.
Anyhow, the other part of equation is analytics and you can tell by looking at what HR writes in job postings. Couple years ago all you needed were hard skills aka can you use this tech, that software, this app. Now its expected and they want to know how you can apply it to different situations aka analytics. Just like with certain hedge funds, the program will analyze the trades and spit out a result, but it can't read into the future, predict regime changes (Venezuela), the 2007 market crash, or the next revolutionary natural resource (Coltan aka iPhone, Samsung, anything that uses a chip). The early bird will always be a human not a computer and its the early bird that reaps the rewards not the person or "thing" last to know. We are a long way from Artificial Intelligence like HBO Westworld.
Let it all happen and good riddance to mindless repetitive labor in all its forms. That will free humanity to learn and develop. Higher tasks will appear where lower tasks disappear. That's how life works. There is 6,000 years of jobs being eliminated. And we still have near full employment for anyone who really wants to work. Human beings shouldn't be making hamburgers or sending out form letters. There are better things to do. And we will innovate and create new and better and more creative tasks to replace the silly grinds that so many of us call jobs.
I have to disagree with this. Unless the definition of "near" is 30% unemployment and "full" is part time at less then 20 hours minimum wage. That is if you are lucky enough. Have you never seen people lined up around an amazon warehouse? There are still places where people are hurting for work.
With new technology comes new work, new jobs, and new opportunities.
Don't forget 90% of people used to be in farming. What is farming now, like 5% (I don't know) do to mega-tractors and mass production methods.
That's a simplified argument. It all depends on how capital flows.
1. It could go 100% to real people at the end of the chain (engineers, marketers, laborers etc)
2. It could go 100% to raw materials and energy at the end of the chain.
Of course, it's always somewhere in between, with some taxes thrown in to make it more complicated. But we're worried that there is an impending massive shift to #2, resulting in a massive shrinkage of people with income. Imagine a world where 20% are unemployed without welfare. Now imagine 80%.
Where do we draw the line and start exterminating people? Semi-rhetorical question.
With new technology comes new work, new jobs, and new opportunities.
Don't forget 90% of people used to be in farming. What is farming now, like 5% (I don't know) do to mega-tractors and mass production methods.
But the new (at the time) professions still involved human labor. We are getting much, much closer to the point no human involvement is required at all.
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