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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?

#691

Post by dang »

solumunus wrote: post #600
mike_hearn wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#692

Post by conductr »

IanCal wrote: post #667
albumen wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn’t tax tractors, but we did tax the expanded economy tractors enabled, and built institutions to manage the transition. Ex-farmhands had time to move into new jobs created by the Industrial Revolution, and it took decades. People also moved into knowledge work. What happens when AI takes all those jobs in far less time, with no other industries to offer employment? If AI makes a few people trillionaires while…

> If AI makes a few people trillionaires while hollowing out the middle class, how do we keep the lights on? Tax the thing you care about? You don't need to care really about the definition of AI or what an AI is or anything like that, you care that some people got trillions. Tax "making an absolute shitton of money" or "being worth an insane amount". Taxing AI specifically means you're absolutely fucked if Altman tu…

Easy to say in a online forum, I imagine this could quite literally start a civil war in some nations.

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

#693

Post by Terr_ »

integralid wrote: post #556
etothepii wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really comes down to valuation. The unit of account for tax is the currency of the relevant sovereign. Most contracts for income are denominated in that unit of account, even if it is not there is often a highly liquid market (FX) between units of account. Most wealth is not stored in assets where the unit of account is that of the sovereign. This counts double for assets with a physical location. This isn't somet…

I don't get it. Can you explain in simpler terms? My understanding is that you say that taxing things denominated in a foreign currency is difficult? But why? I already pay taxes on my capital gains denominated in a foreign currency (for example dollars). There are official government exchange rates for tax reasons, published daily. I don't see anything to hand wave here, because there's no problem.

Not parent-poster, but I imagine the most difficult cases involve non-public stocks or non-fungible physical assets. Consider the problem of: "Someone purchased an irreplaceable ancient urn for $1m and put their parents ashes in it, what's that in taxable wealth today?"

It's too easy for people to offer hypothetical prices they'll never have to execute on. You could establish a price by forcing people to sell anything to the highest bidder, but that kinda explodes any conventional idea of property, and now the government is spending all its time running a trillion sketchy auctions while no human has time to do productive work anymore because your neighbor is trying to buy your car for $1 and you need to arrange a more-plausible offer before you lose it.

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

#694

Post by twoodfin »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #298
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> income tax They don't get money through income! They get most of it through capital gains or unrealized capital gains which are taxed at special low rates and zero rates respectively. It's transparently self-serving and completely indefensible -- though I'm sure you'll try.

Capital gains taxes are applied to capital gains income and are included in the stats above.

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

#695

Post by erin_lave »

testbjjl wrote: post #410
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).

Tractors replaced a task in specific fields, farming, construction largely. AI seems to have the potential to cover more territory. The potential blast radius is greater.

> AI seems to have the potential to cover more territory.

Theoretically, the only two things that any human go to earn money is (a) use muscles or (b) use brains.

I feel like AI plus robots covers all the territory. Maybe not quite yet - maybe we have a few more years, but what job could a human do that couldn't be done by an AI controlling a humanoid robot?

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

#696

Post by kiba »

mike_hearn wrote: post #649
kiba wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ideal LVT would tax the full economic rent of the land, but that's unlikely to happen. We don't want to overshoot 100% because that would cause land abandonment. So in theory, LVT could collect more tax than the state needs to fund services. If that happen, it would be distributed as a Citizen's Dividend. I am skeptical that we wouldn't be able to find a productive use for government spending, but that's a discuss…

I never understood this Georgist argument. The richest people in the world today require very little land. Remote working is easily possible and plenty of companies use it, even if managers don't always like it. This feels like a medieval perspective.

Georgists aren't frozen in time, nor had they ever been limited to just taxing "land". We consider any economic "land" fair game. We even discussed network effects that allow companies like instagram retain a monopoly.

In any case, California are where some of the most powerful tech monopoly are located, and not coincidentally it's also where some of the most expensive land there is.

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

#697

Post by mostertoaster »

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 people think, capital owners who actually provide employment and produce useful things and do better the better they serve the consumer even when their motives aren’t altruistic (and when they are altruistic it is even better) should be taxed more so the giant government corporation can make bureaucrats pockets fatter and waste a bunch of money doing inefficient things is more of a fundamental problem.

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

#698

Post by bal00ns »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #680
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% of earners in the US pay 40% of all income taxes. https://usafacts.org/articles/who-pays-the-most-income-tax/

This covers federal income taxes only, excluding payroll taxes such as Social Security and Medicare. Including those the top 1% pays ~25% of all federal taxes while earning ~22% of all income.

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

#699

Post by tt24 »

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.

Rich people pay pretty much all taxes in the United States.

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

#700

Post by int_19h »

thunky wrote: post #368
slowmovintarget wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

It's not just "heavily influenced" though, it's literally where the smarts are coming from.

I don't think royalties make sense either, but we could at least mandate some arrangement where the resulting model must be open. Or you can keep it closed for a while, but there's a tax on that.

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