Looms possibly?

How about the Wheel? Wheels deprive millions of jobs for people to carry stuff.

I didn't realize this would prompt so much emotion. I only said it as a consideration. As a reminder this is a quote from Bill Gates ""If a human worker does $50,000 of work in a factory, that income is taxed," Gates said in an interview with Quartz. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think we'd tax the robot at a similar level." < Google it.

If the robot's owner gets an extra $50k income from this, we're actually getting more in tax because their marginal income is higher.

> If the robot's owner gets an extra $50k income from this, we're actually getting more in tax because their marginal income is higher.

If the robot is owned by an individual taxpayer paying personal income tax on the income, and if you ignore taxes other than income tax that levied on labor income, and if you ignore accounting tricks, etc., this is fairly obviously true from the way progressive tax rates work.

OTOH, it becomes less obviously true when you consider how the robots are likely to be owned in the real world, the full set of taxes on income in the real world, and the greater practical ability of the rich to avoid taxation in the current system.

Assuming the owners of capital are actually paying their fair-share of taxes on that extra $50k, as codified by the law.

Just to add a bit to the discussion - middle class wage earners generally pay a much higher over-all tax rate than the rich. The robot's labor would be almost certainly taxed like any other piece of equipment, with depreciation, etc... And the increased income would also be taxed at the same rate as the business. Both of these are, as far as I know, going to be much lower than the taxes that the original wage earner had paid.