Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 1001 posts

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#291

Post by smallmancontrov »

Armisael16 wrote: post #266
xzjis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy is that productivity per employee just keeps increasing year after year, but successive neoliberal governments continue to lower corporate taxes. They should be doing the exact opposite! Taxes should be raised as productivity increases! AI is just one more tool that gradually increases productivity, among others.

Why should productivity and corporate tax rates be correlated at all, up or down? The link there is not obvious.

Insofar as productivity is a sign of the system getting imbalanced towards capital, the system should be pushed back and the everyman thrown a bone.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#292

Post by MLgulabio »

rjdj377dhabsn wrote: post #213
MLgulabio wrote: post #136

Around the world, every country should be allowed to make 'money' for specific cases like for teacher salaries, ... so that most people are able to work for the state or for our community. Everyone works less, everyone works better, we will then see how much humans we still need.

So.. communism? That hasn't worked out too great in the past.

Uncontrolled capitalism hasn't worked either. Controlled capitalism brought us were we are today: Huge inequality around the globe especially in 3th world countries like the USA and destruction of the whole ecosystem we live in.

Communism didn't look great next to capitalism (east europe vs. west europe) but those people were also happy.

My idea is not communism though, its a 'if you do beneficial things for society, we have resources for it'. If you are teaching kids, we the planet have resources for you.

If you take care of kids, we the planet, have resources for you.

Lets call it Civic Duty Dividend or Care Standard or Public Service Money.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#293

Post by solumunus »

lazide wrote: post #278
bruce511 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'm following your thought on capital gains tax. Capital Gain tax occurs when you sell an asset for more than you paid for it. AI (software) is not an asset, and I'm not sure how you'd sell it. Computers and robots are assets (although they typically depreciate not appreciate.) Either way capital gains tax is applied to the asset not the productivity of the asset . The productivity in turn is taxed as pa…

The ownership of software absolutely is an asset. It’s Intellectual Property. What are you referring to?

They’re referring to the comment that they’re replying to, which talks about capital gains tax in an entirely different context to how you referenced software ownership.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#294

Post by amdivia »

I think ignoring AI, some Tax formula could be found that uses the number of employees in a company compared to some measure of the economical size of the company.

(With the goal of pushing the company to create jobs proportional to its scale, or pay an additional Tax equivalent to the number of employees they could've payed for)

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#295

Post by [deleted] »

artursapek wrote: post #236
xzjis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy is that productivity per employee just keeps increasing year after year, but successive neoliberal governments continue to lower corporate taxes. They should be doing the exact opposite! Taxes should be raised as productivity increases! AI is just one more tool that gradually increases productivity, among others.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#297

Post by amelius »

doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

The fundamental problem of our time is that even capital in the form of bricks makes more money than most kinds of labor.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#298

Post by smallmancontrov »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #271
doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

The top 1% already pays more than 40% of all federal income tax at a 26.09% effective rate. The bottom 50% has an effective rate of 3.7% and contributes only 3% of all tax revenues. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in... How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?

> income tax

They don't get money through income! They get most of it through capital gains or unrealized capital gains which are taxed at special low rates and zero rates respectively.

It's transparently self-serving and completely indefensible -- though I'm sure you'll try.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#299

Post by haizhung »

doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

Very well put. I am working on tooling that will likely increase developer productivity by a large factor; and will most likely be used to lay off more developers as their labor is no longer required.

I often ask myself whether that is ethical or not. But in the end, it’s not the tooling that’s unethical. Productivity increases are good for everyone, under normal circumstances.

It’s the fact that all the gains are being collected by the already uber-wealthy that’s wrong.

Post reply on HN