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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?

#421

Post by gethly »

I'm not even going to read it because its dumb.

If a company has less employees due to automation, its profits go up due to lower costs. If government tries to extract higher taxes from such company due to automation taking jobs away form people, that company will increase its prices to offset this increase in costs. But companies themselves pay no taxes, they just funnel taxes away from customers - humans. So in the end, less people will work while at the same time they will pay more taxes.

Economics 1.0.1

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

#422

Post by philipallstar »

ashleyn wrote: post #366
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).

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…

> The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tell right now

The same can't even be said for contemporary AI, because lots of the jobs it's going to replace are theoretical or hype. Self-driving cars should've been here years ago, but because AI is extremely hard to improve upon once it gets to a certain level of efficacy, they haven't happened.

The question is: should we be discussing this stuff when AI hasn't started taking all those jobs yet?

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

#424

Post by twodave »

lelandfe wrote: post #408
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…

> technological unemployment is not something that will be sudden or obvious I already have friends experiencing technological unemployment. Programmers suddenly need backup plans. Several designers I know are changing careers. Not to mention, the voiceover artist profession will probably cease to exist besides this last batch of known voices. Writer, editor - these were dependable careers for friends, once. A friend…

People keep trying to tie these two things together, forgetting the fact that ZIRP also ended 3 years ago, and that combined with the end of the COVID-era employer credits are when the layoffs really began. I won't say LLMs are having no impact at all on employment, but not to the degree where the job pool has dried up. Companies were encouraged to over-hire for years, and now that the free money is gone, they're acting logically. I believe if ZIRP came back we'd see workforces expand again and AI would just be seen as another useful tool.

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

#425

Post by philipallstar »

lelandfe wrote: post #408
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…

> technological unemployment is not something that will be sudden or obvious I already have friends experiencing technological unemployment. Programmers suddenly need backup plans. Several designers I know are changing careers. Not to mention, the voiceover artist profession will probably cease to exist besides this last batch of known voices. Writer, editor - these were dependable careers for friends, once. A friend…

The refrigerator put paid to the shipping-ice-from-the-arctic-circle industry quickly as well. The main shock is for the people who write stuff we read, as they never expected to be in a profession that could be automated away. Lots and lots of stuff has been automated away, but we never heard their voices.

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

#426

Post by nancyminusone »

jlawson wrote: post #401
immibis wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wrong decision wasn't using productivity enhancers - it was building a society around the idea that everyone MUST have a job, even in the presence of substantial productivity enhancers which massively decrease the number of jobs. We've scraped by so far... so far.

The problem is that for the vast majority of people to be psychologically healthy they must have a job. This isn't a societal decision, it's a reality about how humans are. The alternative is like feeding an animal instead of letting it live the lifestyle it's adapted for. That helps it in the moment but over time its capacities atrophy and it ends up weakened, twisted and harmed with nothing to spend its natural ins…

This viewpoint seems to be at odds with the well documented human phenomenon of "retirement"

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

#427

Post by philipallstar »

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.

If everything's automated then you don't need taxes to pay people.

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

#428

Post by sailfast »

zozbot234 wrote: post #407
robinhoode wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a bad deal. Capital makes the marginal worker more productive, not less. Why should workers care about being more productive if they do not reap the rewards in terms of wages? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ...

Total compensation involves more than just wages. Providing benefits such as healthcare coverage is inherently expensive, since productivity gains in healthcare have been limited.

At least in the United States we are not getting this benefit.

If AI does begin to really crater the job market, only owners of AI (yes including shareholders) will benefit but most folks do not own stock - or at least do not own any significant amount of stock.

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

#429

Post by viralpoetry »

"The gains in technics are never registered automatically in society: they require equally adroid inventions and adaptations in politics; and the careless habit of attributiong to mechanical improvements a direct role as instruments of culture and civilization puts a demand upon the machine to which it cannot respond."

- Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization

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