If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by thesmtsolver2 » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

elevatortrim wrote: post #558

andsoitis wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is Are you sure capital owners do not contribute to our states and financial systems? For instance, Jeff Bezos is worth $238 billion even though Amazon has a $2.6 trillion market cap. That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, gover…

You are assuming: 1. Value created for other shareholders is a good thing 2. $ "value" directly translates to actual resources or services 3. These employees and customers would not get the same or more value elsewhere if Amazon did not exist 4. This "value" created by Amazon is better compared to the alternative (such as more resources used locally instead of global trade)

Well, you are assuming there is a central benevolent dictator who can compute "Value" more accurately than millions of people collectively voting with their wallets.

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

#562

Post by SirMaster » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

code_for_monkey wrote: post #555

andsoitis wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is Are you sure capital owners do not contribute to our states and financial systems? For instance, Jeff Bezos is worth $238 billion even though Amazon has a $2.6 trillion market cap. That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, gover…

I would say they dont contribute. I don't think Jeff Bezos has contributed anything positive, at all. He's managed to become insanely rich in a system that rewards bad behavior, so what? All that value isnt doing anything.

Are you saying Amazon isn't a positive? Or that Bezos didn't contribute to making Amazon what it is?

I think it's pretty clear Amazon is quite a positive given by how many people like using it so much for it's convenient 1-stop shop, quick shipping, and hassle-free return process.

Are you saying it would be better to have to shop at 1000 different little websites with probably crappy or at least inconsistent return processes?

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

#563

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #549

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 fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is Are you sure capital owners do not contribute to our states and financial systems? For instance, Jeff Bezos is worth $238 billion even though Amazon has a $2.6 trillion market cap. That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, gover…

[deleted]

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

#564

Post by andsoitis » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #498

andsoitis wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There’s a certain amount of independence between municipalities, counties, states, and the federal government.

Except in a minority of cases (e.g. NYC), it is states and the federal government that taxes income and capital gains, and they are already not taxing citizens on the y realized value of their home.

So if one is upset about that, you have to take it up with local elections or introduce a measure with your state to prevent municipalities from levying this specific tax.

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

#565

Post by falcor84 » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

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…

> each new Claude Opus is an incremental improvement at best, still unable to execute an entire business idea from a single prompt.

If your way of evaluating the progress of AI is a binary one, then you'll see no progress at all until suddenly it passes that bar.

But seeing that we do have incremental improvements on essentially all evals (and my own experience), even if it takes another decade we should be planning for it now. Even if it does require an entirely fundamental breakthrough like the attention paper, given the amount of researchers working on it, and capital devoted to it, I wouldn't put any money against such a breakthrough arriving before long.

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

#566

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

This question is weirdly wrapped up in how robots are perceived, and how humanoid robots are propelled by hype about replacing humans. Robots that are actual industrial capital equipment already pay property taxes. Unless of course the state or municipality has been bamboozled into giving up those property taxes for the sake of jobs that robots are eliminating. That's weird.

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

#567

Post by boltzmann_ » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #543

Many problems with the tax code and all of its complications is due to the fact that people are taxed on revenue and businesses are taxed on profit (revenue -costs). It would be good to remove this mismatch. I would prefer eliminating the income tax (land tax anyone?) but you could take business on revenue (a VAT is sort of like this).

This will destroy low margin business (ex Supermarkets?), they will be forced to increase prices. There is a million downstream bad consequences

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

#568

Post by lenerdenator » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #561

elevatortrim wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming: 1. Value created for other shareholders is a good thing 2. $ "value" directly translates to actual resources or services 3. These employees and customers would not get the same or more value elsewhere if Amazon did not exist 4. This "value" created by Amazon is better compared to the alternative (such as more resources used locally instead of global trade)

Well, you are assuming there is a central benevolent dictator who can compute "Value" more accurately than millions of people collectively voting with their wallets.

Not to speak for the other poster but I didn't see any implication of a central benevolent dictator in their comment.

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

#569

Post by Razengan » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

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]

Stop saying we like all of your schizophrenic identities are posting at once.

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

#570

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #561

elevatortrim wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming: 1. Value created for other shareholders is a good thing 2. $ "value" directly translates to actual resources or services 3. These employees and customers would not get the same or more value elsewhere if Amazon did not exist 4. This "value" created by Amazon is better compared to the alternative (such as more resources used locally instead of global trade)

Well, you are assuming there is a central benevolent dictator who can compute "Value" more accurately than millions of people collectively voting with their wallets.

If AGI is actually attainable, then, sure, planned economies will be more performant than market economies, especially for high value industrial captal equipment. No need for Gosplan to decide on your candy bars and craft breweries.