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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?

#591

Post by wslh »

Salgat wrote: post #572
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…

> That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and other stakeholders. That's not Bezos' doing alone, that's Bezos plus over a million workers that did that. If Bezos never existed in history, someone else would have filled in that market. We need to stop this myth that a few men alone create all this value and that without them we'…

This is a two-edged discussion. On one extreme, there’s an interesting Marxist idea that value creation is largely the product of historical and social forces, not just individual effort. However, I don’t think it’s fair to single out AI, or any billionaire to fit that narrative while ignoring other factors, such as the idea that nations should not exist since they can be thought in the same terms.

On the other side, Jeff Bezos is clearly an outlier. Even if we agree that ecommerce would have existed without him, we don’t know whether someone else would have created the same scale of value.

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

#592

Post by JKCalhoun »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #560
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.

By that logic, you should also consider what happens if the brokerage account goes negative. Are you willing to do that?

That's an easy decision to make since almost no one's brokerage account has gone negative in almost forever. (Mine sure hasn't and I know nothing about stock investing except to buy index funds.)

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

#593

Post by JKCalhoun »

stingraycharles wrote: post #218
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.

It’s much easier to tax the general population than businesses, as they don’t push back as much. It’s the same pattern everywhere around the world (perhaps there are a few exceptions). Businesses can be much more creative with tax evasion as well.

Businesses can play the game where they shop around various municipalities and get them in a race-to-the-bottom on tax breaks if they move their business to their community.

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

#594

Post by JKCalhoun »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #331
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…

The real issue should not be whether they're paying the government. The issue is whether they're paying us for taking the human content of the last two thousand years and baking it into their generators. How do we get royalties on this, like our share of the oil proceeds if we were citizens of Qatar? How do we trade our share of the contribution? There's twenty years of my posting on Reddit, Slashdot, HN, and other f…

"How do we get royalties on this, like our share of the oil proceeds if we were citizens of Qatar?"

Alaska as a state managed to do just that and more or less has an annual UBI.

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

#595

Post by shagie »

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…

It's been around for nearly a decade.

Taxing Robots : Easier Said Than Done (2017) https://www.ctf.ca/EN/EN/Newsletters/Canadian_Tax_Focus/2017...

Robots, technological change and taxation (2017) https://www.taxjournal.com/articles/robots-technological-cha...

Why robots should be taxed if they take people's jobs (2017) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/22/robots-tax-...

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

#596

Post by solumunus »

bruce511 wrote: post #541
solumunus wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s how a software business works. The OP seemed to be talking about how we need to reform tax due to worker replacement. Everyone is talking past each other.

Correct, building an AI is an asset, which can then be rented to other businesses. However the thread revolves around employers replacing employees with AI. Given that the number of AI creators is minimal, and the number of companies replacing employees is large, it follows that most companies replacing employees are renting AI, they did not create it. Hence, for those companies, AI is not an asset, it is an expense.…

> One way of taxing those companies would be to tax AI producers based on revenue, not profits.

Why?

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

#597

Post by integralid »

MLgulabio wrote: post #292
rjdj377dhabsn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. communism? That hasn't worked out too great in the past.

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,…

>Communism didn't look great next to capitalism (east europe vs. west europe) but those people were also happy

Which people were happy? Nobody hates communism more than Eastern Europeans. I don't know a single elderly (i.e. lived through communism) person in my country who doesn't hate communism. I think you have a rose tinted view of how communism worked out on Europe.

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

#598

Post by qudat »

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).

I’d rather figure out how to stop taxing people and place the burden on companies entirely. Make it progressive like income tax but make it based on revenue not profits.

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

#599

Post by qeternity »

stingraycharles wrote: post #218
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.

It’s much easier to tax the general population than businesses, as they don’t push back as much. It’s the same pattern everywhere around the world (perhaps there are a few exceptions). Businesses can be much more creative with tax evasion as well.

> It’s much easier to tax the general population than businesses, as they don’t push back as much.

Businesses don't pay taxes. People do. Every dime that a corporation pays is a reduction of capital returns to shareholders, or a reduction of investment into business activity, both of which are taxed again by the people who ultimately receive the capital.

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

#600

Post by solumunus »

mike_hearn wrote: post #528
airstrike wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your argument were true we should set taxes on capital to zero, which is quite obviously a bad idea.

No, that's been a common proposal from economists pretty much since people started examining how economies work. Some places do have a capital gains tax of zero. Switzerland is one of them, and Switzerland is economically more successful than the rest of Europe. Tax is one of those issues where there are actually correct and incorrect answers, thanks to many hundreds of years of active experimentation and relatively…

I’m not sure why all these economists bother arguing theory when obviously they should just go to you for the solutions. It’s all so simple afterall.
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