Why a French pol’s tax on robots is a bad idea

Why a French pol's tax on robots is a bad idea

(c) 2017, Bloomberg View.

The ideas of Benoit Hamon, the surprise front-runner in the presidential primaries of the Socialist Party, are far to the left of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and even the U.K. Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn. This, of course, is the era of the expanding Overton Window, with radical ideas bursting into the mainstream. One Hamon proposal in particular, however, should never make it: A tax on robots, based on the premise that their proliferation is bad for human employment.

Hamon’s most discussed proposal is a $805 (750 euro) monthly universal basic income for the French. It doesn’t make […]

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