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If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

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

#381

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

vjk800 wrote: post #344

Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago. Should we have started taxing tractors? I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).

We didn’t do X before therefore we shouldn’t do X today under very different circumstances is not a good argument.

You’ve already stated what circumstances are different now.

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

#382

Post by btbuildem »

That's chasing the effect, not the cause. Forget taxing AI. Liquidate billionaires instead -- redistribute anything over $1B. Death penalty for any fancy avoidance schemes (applicable to the individual and everyone standing to inherit the wealth, including any kind of corporate structure).

This unbridled greed has metastasized into a global existential threat, and needs to be aggressively eradicated.

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

#383

Post by bensmoif »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #318
titzer wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest. What it would impact is how easily these people could influence the political system and get themselves out of trouble. At $400 billion net worth, Elon Musk could retire one hundred thousand times . He literally wrote multi-million dollar checks to various politicians and ran…

But what do you do with tesla/amazon/etc. then? Force elon to sell of his shares? Take them? What if the price drops? Give the shares back? It's not like he has all that in money in his bank account, it's ownership of companies, their value is not real until someone else is willing to pay.

The tax is his shares, those shares become public assets, the government and (ostensibly) the citizens finally get a say in what the hell is happening with that guy.

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

#384

Post by immibis »

CrazyStat wrote: post #335
smallmancontrov wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To what extent is productivity a sign of the system getting imbalanced towards capital? That relationship is not at all clear to me.

It's not productivity itself; it's the decoupling of productivity from wages. If I'm creating 3 times as much value as my equivalent in 1970, why aren't I getting paid 3 times as much inflation-adjusted money, hmm? It's not even unfair to shareholders - they'd also get 3 times as much as in 1970. But instead they get 10 times as much and I get 0.7 times as much, or something like that. What's the deal?

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

#385

Post by bluedino »

mastazi wrote: post #361
vjk800 wrote: post #344

Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago. Should we have started taxing tractors? I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).

Where do you live? Are tractors not taxed as motor vehicles in your country?

Nope.

They even get to use fuel that has less taxes on it since they don't drive on public roads.

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

#386

Post by cj »

mastazi wrote: post #361
vjk800 wrote: post #344

Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago. Should we have started taxing tractors? I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).

Where do you live? Are tractors not taxed as motor vehicles in your country?

If we tax at the state level like motor vehicles, what happens when AI living in a Texas datacenter replaces 1 million jobs in Florida? The people are in Florida, but the money goes to Texas.

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

#387

Post by CrazyStat »

immibis wrote: post #384
CrazyStat wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what extent is productivity a sign of the system getting imbalanced towards capital? That relationship is not at all clear to me.

It's not productivity itself; it's the decoupling of productivity from wages. If I'm creating 3 times as much value as my equivalent in 1970, why aren't I getting paid 3 times as much inflation-adjusted money, hmm? It's not even unfair to shareholders - they'd also get 3 times as much as in 1970. But instead they get 10 times as much and I get 0.7 times as much, or something like that. What's the deal?

Ok, but that’s not what the post I replied to was saying.

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

#388

Post by snovv_crash »

mcny wrote: post #185
Terr_ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing wealth is much harder on a practical and algorithmic level than taxing income. But either way, taxing the tool is micromanaging the problem, and some powerful people cynically promote that because they can aim the details away from themselves.

I think the simplest explanation is also the best one. Like you said, it is very difficult to tax wealth. I think we have no option other than taxing loans and other money movements like that in sufficiently large scale as ordinary income. If I get a loan for USD 200k for a house once a year, I think it isn't income but if ElMo gets loans worth USD 20M a year, every year, he should pay income tax on all of that as if…

Tax physical assets. Someone has to pay otherwise it gets confiscated by the government. Then exact ownership doesn't matter.

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

#389

Post by iso1631 »

komali2 wrote: post #360
iso1631 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% of Americans would be over 3 million people, not a couple hundred.

.1% hold 12.6% of national wealth so that's 300,000 people. It tends to clump at the top, apparently. In any case, it seems a bit bizarre to me that the wealth is distributed so unevenly. Do you believe those 3 million people work so hard that their value is that much higher than the combined output of 297 million people?

To be in the top .1% you need a wealth of about $60m, certainly nothing to be worried about, it gives you a very nice standard of living.

But it's a lot nearer to someone at the 90%ile wealth of about $2m than the kind of power that those with $1b, let alone centi-billionaires, have. You're talking top level entertainers (actors, sportmen etc)

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

#390

Post by jameshart »

solumunus wrote: post #293
lazide wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a business invests in building an AI system, they now have an asset, and the value of the business reflects the fact the business owns that software asset now - if someone were to buy the business they would get the AI software and all its potential to monetize that asset in the future, so of course it has value.

If its value grows beyond the value the business originally invested to acquire it, it is quite literally a capital gain.

Why do you think Anthropic is worth $175-$350bn? Where did that capital value come from?

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