Robots can perform surgery, defuse bombs and serve up the perfect flat white. Soon they may need programming to fill out their own tax returns. As anxiety grows over the swaths of jobs susceptible to automation, figures as disparate as Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Benoît Hamon, the new champion of the French left, are backing the idea that governments should use the tax system to redress the balance between men and machines.
It is easy to caricature such proposals — but the underlying arguments are not as crazy as they might at first seem.
A direct tax on robots is not the answer. There is no more basis for that than there is for taxing the use of Excel spreadsheets, or electric toasters, or any other labour-saving device. It makes no sense to penalise technological innovation that raises productivity and creates wealth. Indeed, any rich country that makes automation too expensive risks driving its manufacturers away to lower wage jurisdictions.