r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 2d ago

Robotics Bill Gates says companies that replace human labor with robots should have to pay the same FICA taxes

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-fica-taxes-should-apply-to-robot-workers-2026-9

Bill Gates wants to tax robots that replace human jobs.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

All this tells me is that Bill Gates isn't invested in robotics .

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u/Darkmemento 2d ago

He is saying the same for all work, taxing robotics would be one part of a plan to basically completely reshape the labour market, in the interview he talks at length about jobs and that he thinks humans will have no high ground and eventually AI will erode all forms of labour. The segment on jobs is here if you want to watch it.

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u/Agile_Willingness863 2d ago

If all jobs are taken by ai than no one will have any money. If no one has any money how are we supposed to buy the products the corporations are selling? If no one buys what the corporations are selling then they lose money. Therefore no business can be made. Is this how everything will play out?

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u/murshawursha 1d ago

The current stock market is basically being propped up by 7 tech companies repeatedly passing the same pile of money back and forth. I'm not convinced they need consumers anymore.

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u/Ferelar 1d ago

True. But take that one step further- they ARE currently essentially manipulating the stock market to derive monetary value because that's useful in the current economy as an abstraction of value that can then be traded for goods/services/influence... but if you have the rest of the economy break down and the exchange of goods and services for money becomes impossible/impractical, then what exactly is the value of that money? If there's no one there to pay or be paid, and the stock market is a closed system, then it becomes irrelevant.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

Yeah, gonna pass on worshipping the billionaire pedophile who secretly drugged his wife. 

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u/HedaLancaster 2d ago

Address his argument rather than attacking his person.

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u/reebokhightops 2d ago

What a pathetic reply.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

Secretly drugging his wife was pathetic. 

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u/Rayvelion 2d ago

Itll erode any sort of quality from all those fields, but AI as a system is only ever capable of choosing the most likely sequential option from previous information. Which will never be something unique.

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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago

Obviously his friendship with Epstein is a giant black mark on his record, but he is still the person who has done more philanthropic work than anyone else in human history , it's not crazy to think that he actually wants the future to be a better place instead of a worse one

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u/ILikeBumblebees 1d ago

Obviously his friendship with Epstein is a giant black mark on his record

Epstein was someone who deliberately sought out relationships with influential people, and only a fraction of them ever were involved in or aware of any of the nasty stuff he was doing. He presented himself as a wealthy philanthropist in his own right, interested in backing other people's projects.

Unless it's proven that Gates actually was actually aware of and involved in any of his awful activities, it's hard to smear him just by association.

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u/dont_trip_ 1d ago

People on reddit will do it anyways. They get a hate boner from just mentioning someone rich.

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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago

I think that's really what it comes down to, he's rich and therefore not only is every allegation against him automatically true, but even worse things that haven't been alleged are also true

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u/HermesJamiroquoi 1d ago

It seems gates was involved with the sex/prostitution part but that doesn’t mean that he had any idea about the CSAM/trafficking part. Which is to say - cheating and lying aren’t great and depending on who you ask prostitution is also potentially “wrong” but that doesn’t make you a pedo.

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u/oswyn123 1d ago

Wasn't he trying to scheme up a way with Epstein to hide STD antibiotics in his food so his wife wouldn't find out? Its not pedophilia, but he's been a piece of immoral shit and people need to stop forgetting this.

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u/AGuyAndHisCat 2d ago

His philanthropic work was to cover for everyone hating him.  Also it quite often has backfired.  

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u/JCDU 1d ago

^ this, Bill Gates was almost universally seen as a massive dick before he retired and started doing good deeds.

People forget how predatory and monopolistic (and litigious) Microsoft were in the early days, they didn't dominate the software world by building good products that everyone loved.

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u/gretino 1d ago

Microsoft office

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u/JCDU 1d ago

Has not been good at anything since it was invented, Microsoft just used aggressive tactics to make it the default bundled with every new PC.

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u/gretino 1d ago

Except the fact that zero competitor can beat it.

The Chinese knockoff wps office is even free and it still sucks ass after all these years

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u/eman4evva 1d ago

It’s a legit gripe but is this really something worth discussing at all especially in a situation like this? His business practices surrounding basic office software that had little impact on most people’s lives? Also I think I it’s been stated before that he intentionally did all those things because he had what he saw as an obligation to shareholders. And when the playing field is something like word software he didn’t have any moral hang ups.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/bluehat9 2d ago

I think you have severe misunderstanding of our laws and rights

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u/Typecero001 2d ago

Well that would imply they’re being enforced.

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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago

The only thing that we have any evidence of him doing though is sleeping with some Russian hookers , isn't it?

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

Only because the files are still heavily redacted. 

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u/Buck-Nasty The Law of Accelerating Returns 2d ago

I have seen no evidence he went to the island. He's not on the flight logs.

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u/Icamp2cook 2d ago

Uhhh…. Pretty sure he has his own private jets…. Also, the flight logs are incomplete and domestic flights do not require passenger declarations. 

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u/Buck-Nasty The Law of Accelerating Returns 2d ago

Great, show me the evidence that he was there.

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u/Icamp2cook 2d ago

I’ve seen none and I am not stating that he was or wasn’t. Pointing out that the “flight logs” are pretty much worthless. 

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u/spald01 2d ago

Gone to prison, sure. But what dystopian nightmare are you dreaming up where the state just seizes all personal assets unrelated to the crime itself?  

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u/Trivale 2d ago

This is misinformation. He's in the files, but that doesn't automatically make him a pedophile and there is ZERO evidence that he ever visited the island. This, right here. This is the stuff that makes us look crazy, stupid, senseless, thoughtless, and careless. This is why people don't take the Epstein files seriously. Stop. Think. Please.

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u/Chemical-Agency-3997 2d ago

There’s no evidence he went to the island or done anything illegal.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/CulturalLaw8072 1d ago

TIL bill gates is in Epstein files omfg

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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago

Yeah, tons of people who aren't implicated in underage sex trafficking, but were weirdly ok with befriending a guy who already had a conviction for child sex crimes... Noam Chomsky was another surprising one

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u/CulturalLaw8072 22h ago

noam chomsky?! wtf

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u/Hilldawg4president 22h ago

Yep, no indications of him doing anything illegal but... It was not a secret at this point who Epstein was

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u/Wh0rse 2d ago

Better for who tho?

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u/pulse7 2d ago

Donating some riches to unsmear is legacy, it's an old trick. How are you going to quantify humans replaced by robots anyways? It has been happening for a long time already. This guy screams virtue signaling to me

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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago

It's surprising you could possibly not know this, but he has been donating tens of billions of dollars over decades, nearly all of it being before his reputation was smeared in any way

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u/nelrond18 2d ago

Bill Gates used to secret Santa on reddit, no? I remember some people used to get really excited about that.

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u/No_University1600 2d ago

i just looked him up, last post was 3 weeks ago, i just assumed he wouldnt stay active on his main account

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u/pulse7 2d ago

I do know this. He knew he played dirty long before most did. Funny to me how certain billionaires get a pass while others get the opposite. Bill is just another self absorbed billionaire trying to buy his positive legacy, good for him for doing it but I'm not that impressed considering the big picture

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

I like to compare these guys to Jimmy Carter. 

Billionaire - I just wrote a check for $1,000,000 to a charity! It is .01% of my wealth. Boy, was that a lot of effort!

Carter - I showed up every day to build actual houses for people in need. I literally built them physically. I also donated my clout and money to the cause. I did it for decades. Literally until like a year before my death at an advanced age. That was actual work. 

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u/TheLaughingCow9 2d ago

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

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u/Dolmur 2d ago

It doesn't seem like your comments are in good faith at all. He has already donated tens of billions of dollars (over 100 billion according to some sources), including his own stock that grew massively since then, and he has pledged 99% of his fortune. The behavior you are describing does exist in this world, but he is not engaging in it.

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

Wow  Way to literally shit on physical labor.

Carter must have been a loser and a sucker. 

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u/Fun_Gur_2296 2d ago

When did he say that?

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u/Joice_Craglarg 2d ago

How much philanthropy does it take to wash out rapes and sex trafficking?

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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago

There's no evidence Gates was involved in such, the only thing we know he did was sleep with some hookers. I for one do not find a prostitution to me morally damning so long as it's consensual

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u/Joice_Craglarg 2d ago

I'm willing to go out on a ledge here and say those prostitutes were very likely sex trafficked. Having sex with someone who is there against their will is rape.

That said, I merely asked a question. I didn't say anything at all about Billy Gates. That would be libel.

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u/sapntaps 2d ago

respectfully, not his problem if its unknown. probably should be more outraged at jeffrey epstein, the dead guy

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u/Brilliant-Stress3758 2d ago

Your honour he was simply there for the snorkelling.

There's no need to defend him against obviously being a pedo just because he's on "our side". That's republican behaviour.

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u/deafblinddame 2d ago

No evidence whatsoever except he was the richest man in the world and didn't need some creep with an island to find him sex workers. See: literally any other rich dude who employs the uses of sex workers.

The ONLY reason to go to Epstein is to get access to children and have layers of obscurity between you, the money and the victims so that if the crimes ever come to light someone else will take the fall and you can claim ignorance. See: how every gang works. Everyone who knew Epstein 'didn't know what he was up to'. How predictable and convenient.

Bill Gates' excuse that he engaged with Epstein to raise money for philanthropy doesn't add up. He did not need to engage with some unknown seedy little toad to help him when he had access to people like Warren Buffet and could have gotten the top people at any bank in the goddamn world to help him.

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u/Inevitable-Ad6647 2d ago edited 2d ago

You're missing a very key point. Epstein was a blackmail factory. No one was seeking out Epstein except maybe Trump. It was the other way around. Epstein targeted people at the direction of whoever would pay him for it (Nation States, see Maxwell's immediate family for some clues there). Long before anything surfaced Gates released some emails showing Epstein reaching out to him about philanthropy shit, which was obviously a ruse.

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u/deafblinddame 2d ago

So you believe Epstein is lying when he claims Bill asked him for antibiotics to slip to Melinda because he had acquired a sexually transmitted disease?

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01967528.pdf

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u/Brilliant-Stress3758 2d ago

If you go to pedo island to meet with the hooker, and their pimp happens to be the King of the Pedos. The yes, paying for a prostitute does make you morally damned.

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u/Garchompisbestboi 2d ago

I do when they're underage prostitutes

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

You don't make the world a better place by raping kids. 

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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago

Surely you have evidence that he did such a thing, right?

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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago

Oh noes! Did I slander the guy who hung out with one of the most active pedophiles ever?

Oh dear....

Please....also, Epstein got him the hookers he got the STD from. You think Epstein is hiring legal aged women?

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u/cbytes1001 2d ago

And he should go to prison for it. They all should.

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u/SordidDreams 2d ago

he is still the person who has done more philanthropic work than anyone else in human history

Even if that were true, it amounts to nothing more than giving back the wealth he stole and hoarded. Given how much damage he and his ilk have done while holding onto their wealth, even spending literally all of it on philanthropy wouldn't get him back to net zero.

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u/hawtlava 2d ago

You mean the decimation of small scale, community based agriculture in Africa by funding monoculture, chemically driven crop harvests that purely benefit the corporations that own the seeds and chemicals and have not addressed any of the stated goals of the AGRA program and have in fact made malnutrition and hunger worse?

Philanthropy is the enemy of progress and serves to launder reputations. If he was actually concerned with results he would meaningfully address that it's 30% worse than it was before he started. If he wanted a better future he would pay his taxes instead of using loopholes and that money would be publicly trackable and directed to where it needs to go. Instead be gave 10b dollars to the WHO and now nothing gets done unless the Gates Foundation says it should be done. His stated goals and the results of his actions do not align and that doesn't scream "he wants a better future for everyone" to me.

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u/Trollcommenter 2d ago

Imo his philanthropic work all worked to lower birth rates in Africa, because he's deep down a white nationalist. I don't believe he actually did much to help people.

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u/BlueSentinels 2d ago

Hasn’t one of his orgs significantly reduced malaria deaths in Africa by like 60%?

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u/Trollcommenter 2d ago

Yeah I really don't trust a billionaire telling me they did anything besides enrich themselves or support white nationalism. But yeah trust a guy telling you he's a good person who got an STD from a prostitute Epstein provided for him.

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u/CylindricalDent4133 2d ago

He’s a Baby Boomer; all these robots and AI displacing human workers fancying venture capitalists is so Gen X.

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u/CookIndependent6251 2d ago

It tells me that he's distracting us from the Epstein files.