Bill Gates: Yes, robots really are about to take your jobs
On March 14, 2014, Brad Reed writes on Yahoo.com:
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t going to sugarcoat things: The increasing power of automation technology is going to put a lot of people out of work. Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots.
“Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses… it’s progressing,” Gates said. “Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set… 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model.”
As for what governments should do to prevent social unrest in the wake of mass unemployment, the Microsoft cofounder said that they should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans over algorithms. This means eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also scrapping the minimum wage so that businesses will feel comfortable employing people at dirt-cheap wages instead of outsourcing their jobs to an iPad.
And it’s not just “low-skilled” workers who will have to worry about automation. As Business Insider points out, The Economist earlier this year predicted that high-paying jobs such as accountants, real estate sales agents and commercial pilots would all lose their jobs to software within the next 20 years.
Can you believe Bill Gates stated: “…[people] should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans over algorithms. … scrapping the minimum wage so that businesses will feel comfortable employing people at dirt-cheap wages instead of outsourcing their jobs to an iPad.”
What is upsetting about Bill Gates’ views is that he completely ignores the issue of OWNERSHIP concentration of wealth, yet he knows very well that the reason he is wealthy––the second wealthiest according to Fortune––is because he is an OWNER of a massive diversified capital asset portfolio, including Microsoft.
Gates also knows from first-hand experience that increasing concentration of wealth (the ownership of valued assets) feeds on itself, assuring that the already wealthy will just get wealthier. Gates fails to focus on the necessary policies to broaden OWNERSHIP participation in the economy. even while the bottom 90 percent struggle to make ends meet on stagnant incomes. It is impossible for them to accumulate savings. which sadly is the requirement for being able to invest and benefit from a growing portfolio of wealth assets.
Gates needs to realize that the problem of income inequality and wealth inequality is rooted in the archaic notion that savings are required to finance economic growth and attain ownership of valuable productive capital assets. Bill Gates, Chris Matthews, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, other Federal Reserve Board members, influential economists and business leaders, as well as political leaders, should read Harold Moulton’s “The Formation Of Capital, ” in which he argues that it makes no sense to finance new productive capital out of past savings. Instead, economic growth should be financed out of future earnings (savings), and provide that every citizen become an owner.
The Federal Reserve is the instrument that can abate wealth inequality by providing capital credit loans at zero “0” percent interest to local banks who would in turn lend this interest-free money (at no additional cost, except for minimum administration fees) for the specific purpose to finance the creation of new wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets to grow the economy. Who should benefit from such interest-free capital credit should be EVERY child, woman and man, who would then be empowered to acquire over time significant portfolios of self-liquidating capital asset investments in the American economy with the capital credit loans repaid out of the FUTURE earnings of the investments.
Broadening capital ownership would “increase the pay of the least advantaged workers” (and non-workers) who would be contributing their productive capital to the expansion of the the economy.
Gates is focused on consumption taxes to encourage savings and investment and redistributive policies such as higher taxes on inheritances. He completely ignores the necessity to broaden capital OWNERSHIP as part of an incentive package that eliminates corporate and capital gains taxes in exchange for creating new owners and, as a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, imposes a transfer tax on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
As the economy continue to grow, even at present-day anemic rates, people are going to OWN the non-human factor––tools, machines, robotics, computerization, etc–– of any economic expansion, which as time progresses will continue to be the MAJOR input factor in ANY economic expansion. Gates knows this. His recommendations will not abate wealth inequality.
What Gates should be advocating is the passage of the Capital Homestead Act. That would enable every child, woman and man to gain equal access to capital credit for generating their own earned ownership income to engage in what Aristotle called “leisure work.” Saez and Zucman and other academics and politicians should take the time to study seriously the Louis Kelso-Mortimer J. Adler paradigm as presented in the free down-loadable books and articles on the Center for Economic and Social Justice “virtual library” at http://www.cesj.org. Then hopefully Saez and Zucman will come to understand that a growing percentage of every citizen’s income and wealth accumulation could conceptually result from the Just Third Way’s reforms to democratize personal opportunities to participate as an owner of future capital growth and non-coercive transfers of existing capital’s ownership opportunities. The Just Third Way strategy would enable a growing number of citizens to be educated, participate in and thus earn a sufficient and increasing capital income. As the market economy continues to become increasingly capital-intensive, more and more citizens would become economically liberated to engage voluntarily in the unpaid and unlimited work of civilization. This would also reduce the cost of education at all levels, and certainly, when implemented increase family choices over education and health benefits.
What is needed and necessary is a new policy direction specifically aimed at creating new capital owners simultaneously with the growth of the economy. The financial mechanisms used MUST NOT REQUIRE past savings and instead be available as a unique and exclusive opportunity for American citizens to access insured, interest-free capital loans for the specific purpose of acquiring newly issued full-dividend earnings payout stock in corporations growing our economy. In other words, we need to use a credit mechanism by which the loans are paid for with the future earnings generated by the creation of new capital assets, which result in products and services needed and wanted by Americans, which then further propels the economy’s growth. Such a policy program is what the Capital Homestead Act would achieve.
The Federal Reserve, which has been largely responsible for the powerlessness of most American citizens, should set an example for all the central banks in the world. Chairwoman Yellen and other members of the Federal Reserve need to wake-up and implement Section 13 paragraph 2, which directs the Federal Reserve to create credit for local banks to make loans where there isn’t enough savings in the system to finance economic growth. We should not destroy the Federal Reserve or make it a political extension of the Treasury Department, but instead reform it so that the American citizens in each of the 12 Federal Reserve Regions become the owners. The result will be that money power will flow from the bottom up, not from the top down––not for consumer credit, not for credit that doesn’t pay for itself or non-productive uses of credit, but for credit for productive uses to expand the economy’s rate of growth.
The Federal Reserve needs to stop monetizing unproductive debt, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every child, woman and man to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Steadily over time this will create a robust economy with millions of “customers with money” to purchase the products and services that are needed and wanted.
Our leaders need to put on the table for national discussion this SUPER-IRA idea and the necessary reform of our tax policies that would incentivize corporations to pay out fully their earnings in the form of dividend income and issue and sell new stock to grow. The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets,
The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets with future marketable products and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy.
Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept), but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.
Essentially, the pressing need is for everyone in a position of influence to encourage President Obama to raise the consciousness of the American people by making his NUMBER ONE focus the introduction of a National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream of property ownership as a primary source of personal wealth.
This is the solution to America’s economic decline in wealth and income inequality, which will result in double-digit economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership so that EVERY American’s income significantly grows, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797 and the platform of the Unite America Party is published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html as well as Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 and OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Platform-of-the-Unite-Amer-by-Gary-Reber-Party-Leadership_Party-Platforms-DNC_Party-Platforms-GOP-RNC_Party-Politics-Democratic-140630-60.html.
The Capital Homestead Act (http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/) would grow the U.S. economy faster in a non-inflationary way, create new private sector jobs, finance new productive capital and provide capital incomes for all Americans from the bottom-up by enabling them to own trillions annually in new capital formation and transfers in current assets . . . without taking private property rights away from billionaires and multi-millionaires over their existing assets.
https://news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-yes-robots-really-jobs-180449215.html
