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Your Say

Stop robots from stealing our jobs: Your Say

Readers react to automation of jobs.

USA TODAY
Ground delivery robot at DuPont Circle, Washington, D.C. on Feb. 20, 2017.

Letter to the editor:

Mark Cuban and Bill Gates are correctly predicting that robots will continue to replace human workers.

This trend will not only have negative effects on job security and employment but also decrease tax revenue for federal and state government. It’s time to consider a “robot tax” on each robot that equals the income taxes lost when a human worker is replaced.

Jim Swab; Kalispell, Mont.

Facebook comments are edited for clarity and grammar:

Automation is either going to lead to permanent high unemployment, or we need to shorten the workweek so more people share the same job. As it is now, only those at the top benefit from the bounty automation provides to the economy. So the shorter workweek (perhaps five days of six hours each) needs to achieve the pay of today’s 40-hour week. That means the top 5% can’t rake off the growing amount of income.

— Mickey Cashen

Cuban: Trump can't stop rise of the robots and their effect on U.S. jobs

Policing the USA

I have been thinking about this problem, asking myself: What will people do when all jobs have been automated? I think you will have a workforce that perhaps can finally be free of the idea that it needs to work more often for money. But I haven’t figured out the zero-sum argument to justify this.

William Worsham

Taxing robots has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever proposed to fix the problems caused by automation. Factories in the U.S. that use robots will have a cost disadvantage over every other factory in the world that also uses robots. This concept robs production savings and offers no real solution.

Charles Edward Brown

Stop automation; outlaw the use of robotics. We need jobs or we will end up with welfare and socialism.

Lester Bowen

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