We have seen the enemy, and it is the robot. A wave of fear over automation is driving dire predictions about robots rendering swaths of Americans unemployable and has created a vogue for outlandishly stupid policy proposals. A popular idea in Silicon Valley is for a so-called universal basic income — the government would write everyone a monthly check — to cushion the unemployment effect of automation (never mind that such a policy would itself have an unemployment effect). Bill Gates wants to tax robots, which makes about as much sense as taxing personal computers back in 1991.
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