If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

Wheelbarrows are pretty simple devices, I’m sure many people just made them on their own. But even accepting this point, there’s no particular reason why we should expect that every invention until now generated new and different types of work, just not this one. The people talking about complete displacement are selling you a story because it gets them clicks and sells books.

I did not argue the tools lowered the value of labour in aggregate - I merely said that they did not increase it. However, the effect on the individual and the group are different. If you have 10 people carrying boulders across the field, and you introduce a wheelbarrow, and now you have one person carrying the same amount of boulders across the field, the total aggregate value of labour has stayed the same. This particular person can certainly capture more of that aggregate value than they could have before, but the total value has not gone up. It’s also true that now you have lowered the cost of moving boulders across the field, so yes, there could be more demand for whatever it is you’re selling and that could mean that maybe you need two or three workers with wheelbarrows. but I think if you’re going to talk about the value of aggregate labor, you have to control for the amount of demand.

A little known economic fact – the wheel was actually invented billions of years ago by bacteria and reinvented by every species since. It’s just that they all held off using it until they could be sure that it would create jobs. Thankfully thousands of years ago, human economists finally did the math and let everyone know that it checked out!

The world's richest elites have managed to evade many types of taxes, using loopholes in tax laws and by controlling government policies to make them more beneficial to the ultra rich.

In many of the world's richest nations, the wealth inequality has become super inequality.

And for the ultra rich, the recent pandemic was a boon, not a bane. This pandemic was the best time in history, if you are a billionaire.

* World’s top 1% richest elites own more wealth than 95% of humanity, says Oxfam.

* The top 1 percent richest own 43 percent of all global financial assets.

* Despite being home to 79 percent of the world’s population, Global South countries own just 31 percent of global wealth.

* According to Oxfam, the fortunes of the world’s richest people increased as much in the span of 24 months (2000-2021) as they did in 23 years. Now the bottom half of the global population would have to toil for an estimated 112 years to earn what the top 1% now rake in over just 12 months.

* “The pandemic—full of sorrow and disruption for most of humanity—has been one of the best times in recorded history for the billionaire class.”, says Oxfam.

* The world's richest people significantly increased their wealth during the pandemic, with two-thirds of the $42 trillion in new wealth going to the wealthiest 1%. Billionaires got 54% richer during pandemic. This surge in billionaire wealth occurred alongside rising poverty rates, as many individuals faced economic hardships due to the pandemic. This has raised concerns about money flowing to the well-heeled instead of to services for those hit hardest by COVID-19. It also points to broader potential implications for a sustainable reset of the global economy.

* Less than 8 cents in every dollar of tax revenue collected in G20 countries comes from taxes on wealth, says Oxfam.

* Oxfam found that the wealthiest 1% of the world population emit as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of the entire human population.

* “Only 0.4 percent of the world’s largest corporations are publicly committed to paying workers a living wage and support a living wage in their value chains”, Oxfam wrote.

* Oxfam likewise discovered that seven out of 10 of the largest corporations on the planet either have a billionaire as their CEO or have a billionaire as their principal shareholder.

* The world's richest people have significantly increased their wealth, with the top ten billionaires collectively adding over $500 billion to their fortunes this year, largely due to the booming AI sector. As of now, their combined net worth is approximately $2.5 trillion.

* 148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profits, 52 percent up on 3-year average, and dished out huge payouts to rich shareholders while hundreds of millions faced cuts in real-term pay.

* The world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity got poorer, according to a report by Oxfam.

* The five richest people on Earth in 2023 were Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett. Their combined wealth skyrocketed from $340 billion in 2020 to $869 billion just three years later. Adjusted for inflation, this was a real increase of 114%.

* Every year, America’s richest citizens paper over their earnings with losses and use other creative accounting strategies to shelter their fortunes, as the tax code allows them to do. As a result, the country’s billionaires pay lower tax rates than many of its millionaires do. Indeed, they pay lower tax rates than many middle-class professionals.

* Elon Musk, the world's richest man who's on track to become the world's first trillionaire, hasn't paid income tax for years.

* Many of the wealthiest individuals in the world, including billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg have been reported to pay little or no federal income taxes, due to legal tax avoidance strategies.

* Shockingly, the Billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses.

* ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

* According to leaked tax returns highlighted in a ProPublica investigation, the 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes from 2014-2018—a “true” tax rate of just 3.4 percent on $401 billion of income.

* A new Oxfam analysis shows the wealth of the 10 richest U.S. billionaires increased by $365 billion in just 12 months, based on data from Forbes.

* According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.

* The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump’s signature first-term domestic-policy package, helped these billionaires keep more of their money. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed this summer, extends the TCJA’s tax cuts, creates new business loopholes, and lowers taxes on estates. To help offset the revenue losses, the Trump administration is stripping health coverage from millions of low-income Americans and shrinking the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The rich, including Trump, will keep getting richer. The poor will pay for it.

Sources:

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-top-1-own-mor...

https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay...

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

https://itep.org/tax-day-billionaires-wealth-inequality-corp...

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/08/billiona...

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/wealth-five-richest-...

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/01/18/billionaires-rich...

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/less-8-cents-every-d...

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/10/the-rich-got-richer-...

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2023/01/16/how-the-worlds-...

https://fortune.com/2022/05/23/pandemic-billionaire-wealth-o...

https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/wealth-of-worlds-top-10-billi...

https://www.businessinsider.com/10-richest-people-ai-boom-te...

This was an article about AI and income tax policy, but you’re making arguments about inequality.