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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?

#391

Post by dymk »

renewiltord wrote: post #377
ashleyn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument hinges rather strongly on whether or not AI is going to create a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect. Tractors did not cause this phenomenon because jevons paradox kicked in and induced demand rendered the problem moot, or demand eventually exceeded what mere tractors were capable of doing for agricultural productivity. The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tel…

Basic income doesn’t do anything. We already have food stamps and so on. The largest sector of US federal spending is health and social welfare. We’d have to end pretty much all those programs to run a minuscule basic income.

That’s a matter of where you get your taxes from. Plenty of corporations can afford to pay a more fair share. And studies on basic income have so far shown it to be effective.

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

#392

Post by iso1631 »

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?

> How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?

Someone with $1b of assets gets far more value from a modern stable western society than someone with $10k of assets

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

#393

Post by zwnow »

renewiltord wrote: post #377
ashleyn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument hinges rather strongly on whether or not AI is going to create a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect. Tractors did not cause this phenomenon because jevons paradox kicked in and induced demand rendered the problem moot, or demand eventually exceeded what mere tractors were capable of doing for agricultural productivity. The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tel…

Basic income doesn’t do anything. We already have food stamps and so on. The largest sector of US federal spending is health and social welfare. We’d have to end pretty much all those programs to run a minuscule basic income.

Whats the alternative? Kill off all humans replaced by AI unable to do something else for a living? Its sad enough that there are food stamps given the amount of food that regularly ends up in a dumpster on a daily basis. Humans come first, not machinery.

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

#394

Post by Gud »

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.

I could not agree more.

Another fundamental problem is that the means of production are concentrated into the hands of a few.

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

#395

Post by jlawson »

dymk wrote: post #391
renewiltord wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income doesn’t do anything. We already have food stamps and so on. The largest sector of US federal spending is health and social welfare. We’d have to end pretty much all those programs to run a minuscule basic income.

That’s a matter of where you get your taxes from. Plenty of corporations can afford to pay a more fair share. And studies on basic income have so far shown it to be effective.

Studies on basic income have shown that it's harmful to the people who receive it.

They report no improvements on any measured outcome. Not lower stress, not more education, not better health. They work a bit less but that doesn't help them or their kids.

Over the long term it harms them because their productive skills, values, and emotional capacities atrophy away from lack of use.

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

#396

Post by estearum »

epolanski wrote: post #172

Interesting how this argument is only popping now that technology is threatening white collar workers. Automation has been shoving blue collars out of the job market for a century. A single farmer can do with his machinery today what took a dozen of people just 50 years ago. Manufacturing has been super automated long ago. Even in commerce automated checkout has been replacing workers for more than a decade. In any c…

This has been a question since at least the industrial revolution.

Perhaps the more interesting bit is that you only seemed to have noticed it when it is asked about white collar workers?

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

#397

Post by tossandthrow »

billy99k wrote: post #342
tossandthrow wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can’t spend any of the money until it becomes personal assets. The oldest trick in the book is to use unrealized gains as collateral for loans - we even have banks specializing in this. Oh, and the US has a law that erases the tax bill for dead people - you'd be stupid not to use this trick.

Would you also be open to paying taxes in your 401k yearly based on unrealized gains?

In the country I live the 401k equivalent is taxed yearly on gains (and again as income when I retire), and I think that is fine - I get a world class society in return (you guessed right, it is a Nordic country)

so the answer is yes.

However, i did not go as far as proposing anything. You are assigning value on my statement.

I merely pointed out that it is a mute point to say that you can not use your unrealized gains.

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

#398

Post by estearum »

unglaublich wrote: post #102
erehweb wrote: post #93

Looking 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 latter makes sense. We also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor. Don't tax tools or income, tax the accumulation of it: wealth.

Just tax land.

Problem solved.

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

#399

Post by [deleted] »

phantom784 wrote: post #263

Perhaps some sort of tax that looks at the ratio of a company's profits (or perhaps revenues) to employees, and the tax scales up if that ratio gets too high. Arguably, a "public good" that companies provide is employment, and as they increase automation, they reduce that "public good" and direct more of their revenue to themselves rather as salary for their employees.

[deleted]

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

#400

Post by smallmancontrov »

immibis wrote: post #379
smallmancontrov wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeowners get taxed every year on the value of their property. Let's do that to stocks, too.

I think both stocks and homes should be taxed on realized value. If you sell it, that realizes the value, but also if you use it as collateral, that realizes the value. If you just live in it, we could say that it realizes the amount of rent you would have paid, or that it realizes nothing.

No, the exponential runaway of "rich people get paid for being rich in proportion to how rich they are" is the core problem and focusing on the derivative is a magic trick intended primarily to draw attention away from the core problem.

The fact that an earned derivative gets heavily taxed and an unearned derivative gets lightly taxed is so stupendously wacky that the absurdity is obvious, but the integral is the core problem.

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