Robonomics: Prepare Today for the Jobless Economy of Tomorrow by John Crews

Author:John Crews
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2016-03-30T21:00:00+00:00

20. Government

Federal, state, county, and city governments will be hit in two ways by advanced automation: they will see their revenue decrease and they will see their expenses fall.

First, governments will see their revenue fall. The U.S. and many state governments get a portion of their revenue from income taxes. Of the 50 states, 43 levy an income tax on their residents, as high as 13% in some California cases.

[108] As citizens lose their jobs, their labor income will not be able to be taxed, and the U.S. and individual states will see their revenue from income tax fall dramatically. The U.S. government will see a decrease in revenue of over 80% (see Chapter 21.) When people lose their jobs, one of their first responses is to reduce their spending. As people spend less, the revenue from sales taxes falls and local governments will see a major revenue stream dry up. Furthermore, without their regular income, most residents will not be able to pay their property taxes or make their house payments. As many property owners try to sell their homes at once, home prices will fall accordingly. Properties are taxed as a percentage of their value, so when home values fall even those property owners who can pay their taxes will produce less income for local governments.

Second, governments’ expenses will fall dramatically as they adopt advanced automation. Faced with budget shortfalls, governments will resort to extraordinary measures to provide services with much less money. Ironically, they will turn to the technology that caused budget shortfalls in the first place: they will be forced to adopt AI systems and smart robots. Many administration jobs will be done by artificial intelligence. Positions that require interfacing with the public or that need a corporeal presence will be done by smart robots. Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, will replace most of their human workers with AI and smart robots. At the local level, building inspection, utility maintenance, road construction, parks and recreation work, animal shelter management – all will be done by smart robots. Local police forces, fire departments, school districts and other services will all be handled by advanced automation.

Research in creating robots to respond to emergencies is already well underway. In 2015, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency completed its Robotics Challenge in which 23 teams from six countries demonstrated their robots designed for disaster response. Robots had to walk across rubble, drive a vehicle, trip circuit breakers, turn valves, and climb stairs. The tasks were chosen so that robots could demonstrate semi-autonomous operation in hazardous, degraded conditions common in disaster zones.

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