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AI employees don't pay taxes

alec.is

61–70 of 190 posts

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#61
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Also, when are people going to get tired of assuming that em dashes automatically mean something was written by an LLM? At this stage, this is such a tired observation that it's unproductive to repeat.

I find it crazy on the basis that the LLMs shouldn't/wouldn't be using them if they weren't in use... in the training set, in the first place.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#62
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the long term, earnings per employee should shrink due to competition. So, a tax like this, can only be expected to generate significant income in emerging industries, where competition isn't as tight. IMO that would be bad for technological progress. I think the core issue that needs to be curbed by the government is anti competitive practices, like Google and Meta buying out competition in infancy, as thats th…

The Government can't put the genie back in the bottle. UBI won't work because economics. Taxes fund the government but what use is a government that cannot govern? What happens when AI is used as employees at all these companies? Is everyone a CEO now? Where does the value come from? Once you peel back the onion, all you get is tears.

“UBI can’t work because economics.” Where is your source? The data says otherwise.

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/08/19/universal-guaranteed...

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#63
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Also, when are people going to get tired of assuming that em dashes automatically mean something was written by an LLM? At this stage, this is such a tired observation that it's unproductive to repeat.

They literally conclude by quoting Gemini 3:

> As my AI assistant gemini-3-flash-preview put it so blindly today:

So I can excuse someone for jumping to the conclusion the rest of it was LLM assisted too.

I read it and while I didn't think it was LLM writing (until the literal LLM writing), it's an incredibly grating style of writing that would earn ridicule before LLMs.

Obnoxiously building up straw men in section headers then knocking them down with "Reality:" is just not a way to have a useful conversation about a topic. Yuck.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#64

Payroll taxes are inefficient as they discourage work and increase its cost for employers, leading to lower hiring. If payroll taxes vanishes because of AI, it doesn't mean that we should stop using it to increase productivity, but rather reorient taxes. For instance, land value tax or consumption taxes are often seen as more efficient and fair, depending on their implementation. They also are AI-proof.

How are sales tax AI proof? AI doesn't tend to buy stuff.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#65
As someone who was blown away when I started my own online business and underestimated what I would be responsible for with taxes I could go full libertarian and yell "TAXATION IS THEFT" from the rafters, but I'll refrain.

It was still a shock though. I thought our system / goal was to encourage individuals to pursue their dreams and be self-sufficient. If that is actually the case, then our system is broken.

Skipping the details I made enough to support myself and my wife. The government wanted around 20%-25% of that, and they do NOT like to take "I can't afford that" as an answer. Fast forward to today and with poor accounting and lack of foresight I now am working a fulltime corporate soul sucking dev job to pay back the government for the years I tried to make it work on my own.

It's the most disillusioned I've ever been with my life. I've never felt as trapped and depressed as I do right now. All because I owe the IRS a large amount of money. On the plus side we have some amazing bombers/jet fighters, and someone is getting their healthcare subsidized.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#66

Apart from being all AI-written: > Reality: It’s not fear; it’s math. If 30% of the workforce is displaced, and the remaining 70% have to pay for the social safety net (or UBI) required to keep the displaced alive, the math breaks. The argument being given simply avoids the question of where the economy itself is in all this. The workers pay taxes, the taxes pay for infrastructure, sure. But the workers aren't doing…

It's always hilarious to see lazy, innumerate people claiming that "it’s math" when in reality they just made up numbers and didn't do any calculations.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#67

Payroll taxes are inefficient as they discourage work and increase its cost for employers, leading to lower hiring. If payroll taxes vanishes because of AI, it doesn't mean that we should stop using it to increase productivity, but rather reorient taxes. For instance, land value tax or consumption taxes are often seen as more efficient and fair, depending on their implementation. They also are AI-proof.

Payroll taxes are the worst for small companies followed by strong labor law. Strong Labor laws are good if the company has 500-1000+ people but not able to fire someone within the month with reason is just dumb (I’m looking at Europe). It indeed causes many startups to hire 50% less people than they can.

I honestly don’t understand taxing anyone making less than something like 500K.

Don’t tax anyone earns less than this, focus all tax collection to top 1% and all big corps that makes more than 5M a year. With all those resource if this can be collected and obvious loopholes patched that’s it.

This would not only bring more tax, but also would fuel massive growth on the bottom line in terms startups and tons of innovation on the medium sized companies.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#68
post #24

We are once again wildly overstating the capabilities of LLMs. They'll cause some minor economic rearrangement in the next ten years but slightly better search isn't going to cause mass unemployment any time soon. This is just propaganda from the "AI" industry to further the perception that they've created a machine god. Wake me up when ClosedAI goes bankrupt.

Since when "AI" exclusively implies LLMs only?

What do you think it implies?

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#69

Cynicism about corporate accountability, regulation, oversight and legal consequences is a much larger concern than LLMs displacing people from what David Graeber would have called shitty jobs. When I read a post that presumes that corporations are above the law and that it's a closed issue, I get sad. We can have nice things, but we must stop supporting governments that aggressively deregulate, prioritize mergers ov…

At this point I think it's incumbent on those who defend the American system to provide evidence that their justice system is not pliable with wealth, that it is a meaningful threat to business and not simply an acceptable accounting risk.

How much do pardons go for these days? One to six million?

As Carney put it, the first and most important difference between the USA and Canada is that Canada enjoys the rule of law.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#70
post #5

There is no credible model for UBI anywhere from AI. It's not going to be paid for by anyone, anywhere. Petrostates including Alaska can pay one, sort of, but they are not replacing people with automation, and their largesse won't last forever. The model of capitalism is to pay for labor and avoid taxes and fees at almost all costs. AI-enabled businesses will not seek to contribute any more to UBI than they seek to c…

The model of capitalism is to use money to build some means of production and hopefully generate more money from that. We are arriving in a form of techno-feudalism where nobody produces anything. People with means to produce will pay the owners of AI who just own and make money through renting shit to people who cant afford building their own data centers or whatever. Its what companies like Amazon or Microsoft alre…

> Capitalists have means to produce, feudalists just collect and own.

I think I get your distinction, but I think reality doesn't sort itself that way. Strictly, the means to produce is the factory, the land, something tangible that effects transformation, while money is just "finance". Capitalists are owners, though, and capitalism is ownerism. "Capital" is conventionally just money.

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