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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?

#491

Post by MLgulabio »

rjdj377dhabsn wrote: post #487
MLgulabio wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncontrolled capitalism hasn't worked either. Controlled capitalism brought us were we are today: Huge inequality around the globe especially in 3th world countries like the USA and destruction of the whole ecosystem we live in. Communism didn't look great next to capitalism (east europe vs. west europe) but those people were also happy. My idea is not communism though, its a 'if you do beneficial things for society,…

> If you take care of kids, we the planet, have resources for you. That sounds nice, but who is going to decide exactly which behaviors to reward and by how much? To avoid grift and corruption, we should probably have everyone vote on it in some kind of democratic process, right? Well that's basically what we have today with municipal elections, and looks like the consensus is we actually don't want to pay teachers a…

We already talking about a hyposisis that AI replaces workers.

I don't think i have the choice of changing the world with a hn comment.

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

#492

Post by Ajedi32 »

philipallstar wrote: post #422
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…

> 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 s…

I think it's fine to discuss solutions to hypothetical future problems as long as it's clear that these are hypothetical future problems you're talking about, not present reality.

In many of these discussions that line seems to get blurred and I start to get the impression people are using the specter of a vague, poorly understood hypothetical future problem to argue for concrete societal changes now.

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

#493

Post by burnerRhodov2 »

amelius wrote: post #297
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 fundamental problem of our time is that even capital in the form of bricks makes more money than most kinds of labor.

I was mind blown when i found that this is a major investment thesis in argentina.

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

#494

Post by brandall10 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #418
thunky wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where's my royalty check? I support the idea of UBI with zero conditions, but not this. You didn't get royalties before AI when someone was heavily influenced by your work/content and converted that into money. If you expected compensation, then you shouldn't have given away your work for free.

[flagged]

Curious, what is your solution to this situation? Imagine all labor has been automated - virtually all facets of life have been commoditized, how does the average person survive in such a society?

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

#495

Post by micromacrofoot »

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?

Top 1% of the US holds 30% of the country's wealth

Bottom 50% only 2% of wealth

50% of the economy my ass, these takes don't even pass basic accounting logic these days

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

#496

Post by phil21 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #400
immibis wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cor…

If you mean the difference between the top line capital gains vs income tax rates, I generally agree but also understand the math does not.

You could reset realized long term capital gains taxes to match income tomorrow and it would not be a huge material difference in the budget. I am 100% for doing this anyways simply because it’s fucking absurd any professional W2 employee is paying more percentage in taxes vs someone who just happens to have idle cash at hand - but it’s more of a “social contract” thing for me than actual tax policy.

The issue really is tax deferral strategies and wealthy folks being able to consistently find strategies to roll over investment dollars into new investments without ever having their gains be subject to pretty much any tax. Stuff like stock buybacks, tax loss harvesting, 1031 exchanges etc.

I don’t think the “loans against a stock portfolio” tax dodge thing is nearly as large as social media decided to pretend it is - but I am very much in favor of taxing any realized value at regular capital gains rates at the time of realization. This means you will probably need to sell a bit of an asset to pay the taxes - which is the entire point.

Unrealized gains are tricky. I’ve been in a situation as a bootstrapped startup founder where I owed “phantom” tax on money I had not yet realized and ended up taking a loss on years later. Zero ability to recover those taxes paid. It put me into a hole for over half a decade. This gives huge preference to those with existing wealth and makes it even harder for someone with nothing to “come up” without handing out a majority share of their company/idea to idle capital. Especially if you’re just doing regular economy things to create a small business doing boring stuff at single digit net margins.

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

#497

Post by giaour »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #327
smallmancontrov wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your brokerage account is large enough that most of your change-in-net-worth happens in unrealized capital gains, your tax rate is 0%. That's pathological at the best of times and in a "capital wins" scenario it's positively thermonuclear.

Folks like to hate on capital gains tax. I think it's perceived as a rich-person deal. But homeowners, do they get taxed each year on the increase in value of their house? Almost the same thing, but not hated on the same way.

Yes, I pay property taxes every year that are based on the current assessed values of my home and car. Only special classes of assets are subject to property taxes. "Wealth tax" proposals are a generalization of the idea of real property taxes so as to stop penalizing specific asset classes like homes.

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

#498

Post by giaour »

andsoitis wrote: post #469
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.

> Homeowners get taxed every year on the value of their property By the local municipality, not the federal or state government.

Huh, I could have sworn the goalposts were over here in the "tax it" debate, not the "ensure it is taxed by a specific entity" debate.

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

#499

Post by lumost »

Treegarden wrote: post #336
harperlee wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree! I find quite concerning that this point is not immediate in any conversation about AI or robots impacting the number of jobs, and the subsequent conversation about innovating new taxes. AI and robots are capital as any other automation on a factory, and capital gains should be taxed appropriately. This is not a new thing completely separate from the untouchable status quo wrt existing taxes. If it tickles…

This is not an easy question. It seemingly boils down to: what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? However, the root questions are: what should the state provide, how much, and of what nature? A secondary question then becomes how important the redistributive aspect is. That’s what you’re seemingly alluding to when you say: people work, get taxed on it, but others automate…

There are core features of the state that we have collectively agreed must be provided - social safety (including police and safety nets), infrastructure, defense, core research funding and more.

The cost of providing the basic obligations and debt service of the U.S. amounts to roughly 1/3rd of the U.S. GDP, while taxation on any activity induces friction and higher costs - the bill will need to be paid either via capital markets or taxation. The investment in automation is no more important than food, or my children's education in my view.

Taxation is generally preferable for capital owners compared to currency debasement and forced debt purchases as it maintains boundaries on what the state can and cannot do. If the current trend is towards a greater share of the economy accruing to capital owners is maintained, then capital taxes will eventually need to rise to sustain state obligations.

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

#500

Post by NickC25 »

jlawson wrote: post #395
dymk wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Over the long term it harms them

Yes, but not for the reasons you state. It harms them because we have an zero desire as a society to effectively combat inflation, which negates any benefits we can give people who receive the basic income.

The powers-that-be don't take action to make sure the people who get basic income can actually use it to improve their lives. Food prices rapidly inflate, education costs skyrocket, medical costs increase exponentially almost overnight.

Much like how the government backstopping student loans basically got university costs to jump, promising to give people a basic income while not addressing the root causes of inequality and wealth disparity just makes things worse.

If you want basic income to truly work, you have to engage in some activities in the short term that are inherently un-capitalistic, although if done correctly, actually improve capitalism as a whole for society. Price controls and freezes, slashing executive pay, increasing taxes on the wealthiest, etc.

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