Newsweek - USA (2019-11-08)

NEWSWEEK.COM 23

up to be lifelong learners. The critical thinking and

methodology taught in science classes builds skills

in children to adapt to new learning environments.

Mathematics skills are relevant across many jobs.

We also need to stop overprescribing college. Only

30 percent of people will get a degree, and that degree

isn’t the path to a secure future it once was. A recent

study found that nearly 43 percent of recent college

graduates are underemployed, not working in a job

that requires that degree. You have to create paths

for students other than college through vocational,

technical and apprenticeship programs. Nearly three-

fifths of German students are in these programs; that

number is under 10 percent in the U.S. It’s a lot harder

to automate a plumber than a call center employee.

STEM and the arts are

important to Yang.

Standardized tests? Not

so much. Clockwise, from

top left: A test taker in

New York; learning the

practical art of home

building in California;

a delivery robot in

England; newly-minted

college graduates

walking into the future.

WHETHER OTHER

DEMOCRATIC

CANDIDATES ARE WRONG

TO SUGGEST

“ROBOT TAXES”

systems to ensure that everyone gets to benefit

from the gains we see from them. Sadly, we’re not

doing that right now, which is why there’s so much

fear around automation.

To ensure that everyone shares in the gains from

these technologies, we need to couple a Value-Added

Tax [VAT] with a mechanism to return that money to

the American people. This way, the American people

can share in the benefits of every Amazon transaction,

Google search and Facebook ad. When these compa-

nies pay their fair share, we can ensure that everyone

is better off. VATs are also harder for corporations to

avoid. The U.S. is one of the few countries that doesn’t

implement a VAT. The countries that already have a

VAT are much better equipped to capture this value.

i understand the desire to implement robot

taxes [a levy on companies that benefit the most from

automation] and increase regulation in an attempt

to slow down the transformation. But it’s simply not

going to work. Automating trucking alone is worth

$168 billion a year—there’s no way you’re going to be

able to fight against companies that are competing

for that pot of gold. Nor should you want to. There’s

a moral argument for self-driving trucks, in that they

can be made to be safer than human drivers.

Technology and progress are good things that

improve our quality of life, as long as we set up

ized tests are a very poor measurement of f HUMAN WORTHanand potential.”d potential.