No, just like neither the horse nor the steam engine paid taxes
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
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Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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?
Isn't this the premise of some sci-fi books and such?
(We in some way, in the developed world, are already mostly here in that the lifestyle of even a well-off person of a thousand years ago is almost entirely supported by machines and such; less than 10% of labor is in farming. What did we do? Created more work (and some would say much busy-work).)
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's crazy is that productivity per employee just keeps increasing year after year, but successive neoliberal governments continue to lower corporate taxes. They should be doing the exact opposite! Taxes should be raised as productivity increases! AI is just one more tool that gradually increases productivity, among others.
> but successive neoliberal governments continue to lower corporate taxes. By itself it wouldn't be a problem, the problem is at the same time they raise taxes for people doing OK, and salaries are mostly stagnating.
True, but good luck getting people to vote for their own interests. It's not hard to fix this. It really isn't. But it's nearly impossible to get through to people. As someone else said, at some point you have to make a choice about where you want to live and do what it takes to get to that place before you drown in the sea of marching morons.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#514Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 "job" can be things like volunteering, artwork, finding a cause, inventing, raising children, teaching... Work can be subsidized and based around personal interest and achieve the "psychologically healthy" aspect that you describe.
> inventing
When they used to say that you'd make more money going to university, that is what they were talking about. The idea was that if you went into the research labs you'd develop capital to multiply human output, which is how you make more money. Most ended up confusing the messaging with "go to university to get a job — the same job you would have done anyway..." and incomes have held stagnant as a result. It was an interesting dream, though.
But not really what everyday normal people want. They like to have somewhere they can show up to and be told what to do, so to speak.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#516Unsurprisingly it’s a European article. Europe will tax AI to death like it does with everything it can’t find a way to compete in. And it can’t compete in much…
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#517Tractors 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…
> This argument hinges rather strongly on whether or not AI is going to create a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect.
I think GP's argument makes a pretty strong case that it won't, even if AI somehow successfully automates 99% of all currently existing tasks. We automated away 99% of jobs once during the agricultural revolution and it didn't result in "a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect" then. Quite the opposite in fact.
Maybe if AI actually automates 100% of everything then we'll need to think about this more. But that seems unlikely to happen anytime in the foreseeable future given the current trajectory of the technology. (Even 50% seems unlikely.)
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you dig into how property tax is allocated, your tax will only go up if your house appreciates more than similar properties - which usually has something like redevelopment or other externality.
It is normally not a fixed percentage of your value, but simply "here's what the county/city paid this/next year, divided amongst the properties proportionate to the value."
Some, like sewer, etc, are per-property, but most are done via the above.
California is an outlier because of Prop-13 but that makes it usually better except when buying.
Side-effects of this can mean that development in your district can reduce your tax rate, depending on what kind of development and who lives there (as property tax is often mainly a school tax, a development for 55+ will bring in more tax payers but not increase the school burden noticeably).
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#519Tractors 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).
We did in a way. Tractors help produce more goods. Those goods incur VAT at the point of sale to consumers.
They don't "help produce more goods". They "reduce the need for human labor", enabling fewer people to produce as much as before.
That's exactly what AI is doing.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#520No, 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.
there is hope for HN!!!