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AI employees don't pay taxes

alec.is

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Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#71

Post by satvikpendem »

arm32 wrote: post #40
Aerolfos wrote: post #38

Apart from being all AI-written: > Reality: It’s not fear; it’s math. If 30% of the workforce is displaced, and the remaining 70% have to pay for the social safety net (or UBI) required to keep the displaced alive, the math breaks. The argument being given simply avoids the question of where the economy itself is in all this. The workers pay taxes, the taxes pay for infrastructure, sure. But the workers aren't doing…

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Did you, or did you not, use any AI or LLMs in the process of writing this article?

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#72

Post by dingnuts »

fullstackwife wrote: post #46
HNisCIS wrote: post #24

We are once again wildly overstating the capabilities of LLMs. They'll cause some minor economic rearrangement in the next ten years but slightly better search isn't going to cause mass unemployment any time soon. This is just propaganda from the "AI" industry to further the perception that they've created a machine god. Wake me up when ClosedAI goes bankrupt.

Since when "AI" exclusively implies LLMs only?

[dead]

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#73

Post by didgetmaster »

What if AI can greatly reduce the amount of money (i.e. tax receipts) that the government needs to function properly? What if AI can quickly determine who really qualifies for government assistance, and cuts off all the fraudsters without needing an army of bureaucrats?

We could even cut out a ton of middle-men and return congress to a part-time job. One can only dream, right?

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#74

Post by jleyank »

In a consumer economy, people have to have the free cash to consume. Today, we call them workers. If they’re displaced, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of corporate taxes or trashed machines. I’d bet on the latter.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#75

Post by quantified »

givinguflac wrote: post #62
reactordev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Government can't put the genie back in the bottle. UBI won't work because economics. Taxes fund the government but what use is a government that cannot govern? What happens when AI is used as employees at all these companies? Is everyone a CEO now? Where does the value come from? Once you peel back the onion, all you get is tears.

“UBI can’t work because economics.” Where is your source? The data says otherwise. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/08/19/universal-guaranteed...

UBI can cause recipients to survive well. Paid for by taxpayers on a very very small scale. There is no model for funding UBI on a large scale. From what?

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#77

Post by snuxoll »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #41
snuxoll wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with consumption taxes, as we have seen time and time again, is they disproportionately affect those with lower incomes.

Do people with lower incomes have the entitlement to all benefits of the state without paying a fair share of their own? If anything, there’s plenty of literature showing that social programs and tax exemptions on the poor make underpaying them possible to begin with. Walmart couldn’t pay $12/hr. if tax exemptions and SNAP and other aid didn’t fill the gap.

We don't have go go to the extremes of employers that pay what is effectively poverty wages relative to cost of living.

The household that brings home $80K/yr would always spend a larger percentage of their income on taxable consumption, than an executive that takes home multiple million per year. Progressive income tax brackets are a better tool for making sure those who are able to pay a larger share of the common good, do so.

Unfortunately, we still have not come up with a realistic way to deal with the hoarding of wealth - both by individuals, as well as corporations like Apple with massive warchests. Even some more broadly accepted ideas like a LVT have some issues if the future really does trend towards "AI" displacing people from their jobs.

One way or another, the reality is that the tools we have right now have persisted because they do their job well when politicians act in good faith and don't implement poor fiscal policy emphasizing short-term gains that result in long-term pain. But, they're still fundamentally flawed, and something is going to have to change if we do see dramatic changes to society in the coming decade due to developing technologies.

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#78

Post by toss1 »

The solution is to stop taxing human labor/income and to start taxing every financial transaction, from buying a piece of candy, a computer component, a service, a house, a data center, or a share of stock, etc.

Just the volume of Equities + TRACE fixed income/structured + munis + real estate is over $200Trillion. A mere 3% tax on those would put the $6T US budget in large surplus. Add $1.7 Quadrillion of ovrerall payments and a 0.3% tax on transactions (yes, $3 per $1000) would also put the US budget in surplus.

All of it would also involve far less tracking and bureaucratic overhead, and indeed far less govt intrusion into people's lives (i.e., not digging into every source and amount of income).

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#79

Post by lovich »

nerdponx wrote: post #13
lovich wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that every year we are capable of producing more, but we keep asking people to accept less? Like how is “we can replace all workers with AI agents” not compatible with “we can extract enough wealth from the new profitability to sustain everyone at the current rate as a service(UBI)” If we’re more productive after replacing everyone with machines then why can’t we just cover everyone’s basic(victuals/housing…

I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but the answer is that the same mechanism that incentivizes all of this innovation prevents the gains from being distributed evenly. You can get fabulously wealthy if you can be an early mover in bringing important new technology to the market. But then you get to keep that wealth and you don't have to share it with anybody if you don't want to. So that's what ends up happening…

I was being facetious.

The original capitalist philosophers were incredibly optimistic about how we could use the system to reduce scarcity. I agreed with that viewpoint.

If our current system is one where I put in a dollar of effort, and get 99 cents in return at best, it seems like that optimistic viewpoint no longer applies.

If that’s the case why should I continue to lend my energy to this system instead of lending it to one that gets me removed from the conversation because it’s against our current leaders desires?

Re: AI employees don't pay taxes

#80

Post by TheSamFischer »

didgetmaster wrote: post #73

What if AI can greatly reduce the amount of money (i.e. tax receipts) that the government needs to function properly? What if AI can quickly determine who really qualifies for government assistance, and cuts off all the fraudsters without needing an army of bureaucrats? We could even cut out a ton of middle-men and return congress to a part-time job. One can only dream, right?

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