Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Center for Digital Business, discusses his new book, co-authored with Erik Brynjolfsson, entitled, “Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.” The book looks at the interplay between unemployment and fast-paced technological innovation. In the book, McAfee and Brynjolfsson propose that technology is outpacing humans, and they discuss whether humans can keep up. According to McAfee, technology is encroaching on skills that once belonged exclusively to humans. He believes that entrepreneurial thinking, different institutions, and new organizational structures can prevent humans from being left behind by the machines.
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Adam Thierer, a Senior Research Fellow with the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center, discusses his new paper, co-authored with Veronique de Rugy, The Internet, Sales Tax, and Tax Competition. With several states in the midst of budget crunches, states and localities struggle to find a way to generate revenue, which, according to Thierer, leads to an aggressive attempt to collect online sales tax. He discusses some of these attempts, like the multi-state compact, that seeks taxation of remote online vendors. Thierer believes this creates incentives for large online companies like Amazon to cut deals with certain states, where jobs will be created in exchange for tax relief. This, according to Thierer, creates unfairness for smaller online companies as well as for brick and mortar shops who have to pay taxes to the state where they have a physical presence. He proposes an origin-based tax, which imposes the tax where the purchase is made instead of tracing the transaction to its consumption destination. This proposal, he submits, will level the playing field between brick and mortar companies and online companies, and promote tax competition.
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Jerry Brito