Automation is causing, and will continue to cause, short-term pain for the people holding the manual jobs it displaces. It always has. However, automation is the primary driver of overall economic growth, as it creates more new jobs than it eliminates, and the new jobs are much more fulfilling than the ones now gone.(read my article on this here: https://medium.com/@philmartie/robots-don-t-get-ennui-f2a7053c97ed#.jx0einskf)

Taxing robots sounds silly to me, but basic income and government sponsored education are both perfect fits for our economy today because of the speed of innovation cycles. They help people bridge from one job to the next with less pain, and the economy is more stable as a result. I also think that companies will make much of this investment themselves because they will view employees as assets that change over time, not just good at one thing. In other words, they are invested in the person, not the job role.

I discuss this stuff with John Markoff in a podcast here: http://www.megadisrupter.com/interviews/2016/2/3/episode-2-john-markoff