盖茨:机器人也应缴所得税

Robots have at least one unfair advantage over human workers: they do not pay income tax.

与人类劳动者相比，机器人至少有一个不公平的优势：不用缴所得税。

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s richest man, thinks that should change. It is an idea that until now has been associated more with European socialists than tech industry leaders, and puts him in the unusual position of explicitly arguing for taxes to slow the adoption of new technology.

微软(Microsoft)联合创始人、世界首富比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)认为，这一点应该改变。到目前为止，支持这种想法的更多是欧洲的社会主义者，而不是科技行业的领袖。这也体现了盖茨不同寻常的立场：明确支持通过征税来延缓新技术的应用。

Mr Gates made his fortune from the spread of PCs, which helped to erase whole categories of workers, from typists to travel agents. But, speaking in an interview with Quartz, he argued that it may be time to deliberately slow the advance of the next job-killing technologies.

盖茨从个人电脑(PC)的普及中发家，电脑普及是导致从打字员到旅行代理商等许多行业消失的因素之一。但他在接受Quartz采访时提出，当前或许应该有意地延缓下一批夺走工作岗位的技术的进步。

“It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm,” he said. “That means they won’t shape it for the positive things it can do. And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some elements of it.”

“如果人们对创新所带来的结果的恐惧总体上超过了他们对创新的热情，这真的很糟糕，”他说，“这意味着他们不会从积极的方面去塑造创新。而且，你知道，跟禁止创新的某些方面相比，征税当然是解决问题的更好办法。”

The idea of using taxes to support people put out of work by automation has been catching on in the tech world, but Mr Gates went further, pushing for a direct levy on robots that would match what human workers pay.

利用税收来支持因自动化普及而失业的人们的想法，在科技界变得越来越流行，但盖茨更进一步，呼吁对机器人直接征收与人类工人水平相当的税金。

“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,” he said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

“现在，人类工人在工厂里工作，他创造了比如说5万美元的价值，这笔收入会被征税，要缴所得税、社会保障税等等，”他说，“如果一个机器人来做同样的工作，你会认为我们应该对机器人征收同样水平的税金。”

The extra money should be used to retrain people the robots have replaced, Mr Gates said, with “communities where this has a particularly big impact” first in line for support.

盖茨表示，针对机器人征收的税款应该用于对被机器人取代的人进行再培训，“受到特别大影响的群体”应该首先获得支持。

Some politicans have also joined the fray. Beno?t Hamon, France’s Socialist candidate in this year’s presidential elections, has called for a tax on robots to fund a minimum income for all.

一些政治家也加入了这场争论。今年法国总统选举的社会党候选人伯努瓦?阿蒙(Beno?t Hamon)呼吁对机器人征税，以便为所有人提供最低收入。

Some tech leaders have hinted that the tech companies’ customers — rather than the industry itself — should foot a higher tax bill. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s current chief executive, said: “Whenever somebody cuts cost, that means, hopefully, a surplus is getting created. You can always tax surplus.”

一些科技企业领袖暗示，科技公司的客户——而不是行业本身——应该支付更高的税金。最近，微软首席执行官萨蒂亚?纳德拉(Satya Nadella)在接受《金融时报》采访时表示：“每当有人削减成本，就意味着有希望创造盈余。你总可以对盈余征税。”

Mr Gates echoed that suggestion, though he also struck a more radical stance with his levy on the machines’ producers. “I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax,” he said. “It’s OK.”

盖茨呼应了这一说法，而且提出了对机器人制造商征税的更激进立场。“我认为，机器人公司不会对可能被征税感到愤怒，”他说，“这没什么。”