No taxation without representation. AI Boston Tea Party follows. Leading to a new AI run nation aka Skynet...
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
121–130 of 1001 posts
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations should be taxed on their profits, including profits boosted by the invention of new technology.
They already have, significantly, around 25-35% in developed economies. The issue is that people often look at revenue, seeing company X earning $100 billion annually, and assume they should pay $20 billion in taxes. However, most AI companies today are not profitable and spend up to 100% more than their revenue on R&D and product development. I doubt they will turn a profit anytime soon, probably not for at least a…
Effective corporate tax rates were between 12 and 14% for the US, with some of the biggest corporations bordering 0%.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#123Looking at the actual article, the people suggesting taxes on AI are American Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, and Bill Gates, founder of MSFT. The Europeans suggest more general taxes on capital instead.
The problem is that rich people and large companies usually go to great lengths to avoid taxes, use loopholes or get special deals (and with great success). The missing tax income has to come from the middle class, who can't avoid it.
With increased automation, this only gets more extreme.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#124By this logic owners of wheel barrows should be taxed for all the manual labour jobs the wheel barrow destroyed.
Corporations should be taxed on their profits, including profits boosted by the invention of new technology.
Yeah absolutely, and they shouldn't be taxed extra specifically for using a new technology. If people need a UBI they should be paid it off the back of all taxes (which should rise if automation is successful), not a specific automation tax. Saving jobs sounds good and it's an easy win but you end up with a stagnant economy where people are paid sinecures to do make-work, which is doubly harmful since the company has to pay extra for the employee, who is also deprived of being able to do some other job that would be useful to the economy.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations should be taxed on their profits, including profits boosted by the invention of new technology.
They already have, significantly, around 25-35% in developed economies. The issue is that people often look at revenue, seeing company X earning $100 billion annually, and assume they should pay $20 billion in taxes. However, most AI companies today are not profitable and spend up to 100% more than their revenue on R&D and product development. I doubt they will turn a profit anytime soon, probably not for at least a…
> They already have, significantly, around 25-35% in developed economies
The thing is companies and even self-employed individuals of a certain wealth level know how to "(ab)use" it. From illegal but trivial and hard to detect tax evasion to financing personal lifestyle by having the company pay for certain luxuries (cars, computers, furniture, etc.).
If you have the wealth to have a dedicated office that dedicated office can be your man cave if you justify it with having all sorts of amenities for customers. And good luck to whoever checks taxes to find out how exactly things are used/not used.
All of that usually means that companies, company owners and high ranking managers get away with not paying taxes for a lot of things that everyone else does simply because they don't have a say within these companies.
And all of that is before you go to the tax advisor.
I am sorry, but if you do hard honest work the chances of you getting rich are beyond slim. Even worse when you do something that actually benefits society.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#126When I was young I imagined a future where nobody had to work because computers and robots could do it all.
I imagine this future could come true, if we're willing to accept that there would be many fewer people.
We could just make more robots instead. If the robots are building robots then there's no barrier there.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
To some degree we already do. Corporations pay taxes. We, as a society, allow corporations to pull resources from the commons because the other side of it is that their existence provides a value through jobs and tax revenue and such. If the equation shifts such that the benefits dry up, but the downsides only increase, why should we allow that? The solution could be as simple as higher business taxes or as wild as u…
This is utterly backwards and your false statement leads to a completely wrong set of inferences. We don't let corporations do anything because they provide value through jobs and taxes. What company do you know that exists (beyond transiently) solely by paying taxes and employing people? Companies are an extension of the individual, they exist to make money for the individuals that own them so that those individuals…
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Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#128By this logic owners of wheel barrows should be taxed for all the manual labour jobs the wheel barrow destroyed.
By your logic wheel barrows could potentially replace >90% of all jobs. AI is on track to being able to remove a society-changing amount of jobs, wheel barrows improved worker's efficiency.
A lot of them are bullshit jobs though. We've yet to see "AI" do anything actually beneficial. I don't mean the stuff that was done before the AI hype like categorizing bacteria, etc.
Watch the news. One crisis after another, so maybe that freed up work force and the wealth generated by "AI" should be used to tackle at least one of them.
Huge amounts of taxes and dedication of that money could be a first step.
Alternatively don't raise taxes and use the oh so great AI to tackle these issues. Should be trivial if you have ">90%" of all work freed up.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#129the left thinks in terms of grift
how to extract rents contributing nothing
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#130What we should do and what will happen are two different realities. Or dream and reality, depending on point of view :)