I always find it amazing that various contemporaries such as Bill Gates, for example, call for new countermeasures such as a robot tax when innovations such as digitization occur, instead of first exploiting the existing social and legal framework conditions, such as profit taxation of companies, as they are already established and were originally intended.

A robot tax would be just about the stupidest thing that governments could impose in the current early phase of the introduction of manufacturing digitization. The introduction of Industry 4.0, the IoT and digitalization is now being promoted by many governments around the world with all kinds of more or less sensible measures and a lot of money to ensure the future competitiveness of their own country. Should these same governments stifle these tender shoots with new taxes? Trying to combat the threat of job losses - perceived or real - with short-term measures to prevent digitalization is a losing battle in the long term!

A 'robot wage tax' cannot work at all, as robots, unlike humans, do not receive a salary. How should the amount of tax on a robot be measured? Engine capacity like a car? Range? Power times distance (work)? What is a 'robot' anyway? A machine that does something automatically - i.e. without human intervention? There are already myriads of such special machines in today's production facilities. Should they all be taxed retroactively? What about collaborative machines where man and machine work hand in hand - for example, a press with manual insertion?

Thinking one step further: what about pure 'software robots' that no longer perform any physical work at all, but only carry out mental work - keyword artificial intelligence? How should their tax level be measured? Required program or memory size in megabytes? CPU computing time as in the computing centers of the past? In this respect, Mr. Gates should take a good look at himself, because the basis of his wealth is DOS, Windows and Office. They have all cost a great many manual jobs, for example in accounting. I wonder what Mr. Gates would say if governments were to levy taxes on his software products - especially retrospectively!

Admittedly: Digitization will eliminate jobs, but others will be created. What can no longer happen in the future, however, is that a few companies or individuals such as Apple or Bill Gates become richer and richer without giving much more to the general public than they do now. The solution is for the profits generated by digitalization and automation to be taxed appropriately and effectively and returned to the general public! And this is where governments have a role to play: In a globalized world, uniform standards must be created with regard to taxes in the same way as for the climate.

And what do governments then do with the newly acquired wealth? They use it to finance new social systems such as the unconditional basic income or the negative income tax: anyone below a certain income threshold not only no longer has to pay taxes, as is the case today, but also receives a payment from the state.

And the people? They will work in new professions that digitalization will undoubtedly create or that are not threatened by digitalization. Or they work less. Who says that a 5-day week has to be the norm? In other words, 'not working' will be completely normal in the future and should no longer have a negative stigma attached to it. And the companies? They will come to terms with the new tax burden as they would with advertising expenditure - simply another necessary expense to attract and retain customers. They have no choice: if they don't, there will be no consumers who can afford their beautiful products.

Real entrepreneurs 'par excellence' such as Elon Musk (formerly Paypal, now Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop), Joe Kaeser (Siemens) or Timotheus Höttges (Telekom) have long understood this and are bringing the unconditional basic income into play as a suitable measure to counter the changes brought about by digitalization.

And no robot tax!