Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could not agree more. Another fundamental problem is that the means of production are concentrated into the hands of a few.
Are they though? At least for AI/software the last 30 years were fantastic to have universal access to means of production (compilers, tools, operating systems, models, you name it). I am more worried about the capability of people to use the free means of production (more precisely improve education) rather than the concentration. Edit: and to remove any doubt, I do agree that taxation of capital is completely badly…
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
721–730 of 1001 posts
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#722No, 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.
Capitalism works when a market works; capitalism fails when a market fails. Healthcare is a great example, because there’s an obvious and inherent imbalance in demand vs supply. Firefighting is another great example. These also have externalities to the community as a whole that everyone gets, even when you don’t pay/need the service; so it makes sense to make everyone pay (taxes). Even if you never have a child, even if you send your kids to private school, you live in a society that could only exist because of a (formerly, relatively) high standard of public education. So everyone pays for schools.
The idea of government bureaucrats lining their pockets is also (formerly, relatively) ridiculous: who would get into US government bureaucracy to make money? They are all (formerly, relatively) doing it almost uniformly because they believe in the mission, because they would almost all make more money going private.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to point out that is lost in these arguments of “they create value for the shareholders”. Folks that own a vast amount of stock do not pay taxes on that stock. They own the shares, and they take out loans against those shares. At some point they rollover or pay off those loans by selling some shares, but the shares have increased in value significantly in that time, or they’ve been granted new shares. When…
First, taxes still get paid when the individual dies as estate tax. Second, increased shareholder value typically means more corporate profit which is also taxed. Third, dividends are taxed. So your claim that the shareholder value never makes its way into the tax system is plainly false. This is all aside from the fact that increased shareholder value means a more abundance society regardless of the increase in taxe…
Almost no one in the US pays the estate tax. It only applies to estates over $14MM and most large estates get reorganized into trusts with estate tax avoidance as a primary motive.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share? How exactly do you propose that they pay their fair share when they literally do not have the money or assets to do so? Are you proposing modern day slavery? Perhaps people selling their family? I'm curious what happens if you take this line of thought to it's actual conclusion.
The solution is obvious and simple: Tax wealth not work.
3 years of not taking out debt, while still needing everyone else to pay current rates. Then you're back to square one. Sans billionaires and sans any major capital investment anywhere.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I pay property taxes every year that are based on the current assessed values of my home and car. Only special classes of assets are subject to property taxes. "Wealth tax" proposals are a generalization of the idea of real property taxes so as to stop penalizing specific asset classes like homes.
If you dig into how property tax is allocated, your tax will only go up if your house appreciates more than similar properties - which usually has something like redevelopment or other externality. It is normally not a fixed percentage of your value, but simply "here's what the county/city paid this/next year, divided amongst the properties proportionate to the value." Some, like sewer, etc, are per-property, but mos…
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
If productivity is increasing but not average salary, then by definition the additional wealth is being taken by the owners of capital.
No it’s not. If the increased productivity is realized by multiple industries, then they all compete on price and the price of their goods comes down. That means the consumers of the product capture the gains in productivity. Farmers using machinery instead of labor has meant cheaper food for everyone, not rich farmers.
I think that if we look at inflation-adjusted productivity, and inflation-adjusted average income, then that would indeed prove increasing inequality, right?
I believe the chart in this link is adjusted by inflation. Showing overall the same trend:
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> If AGI is actually attainable, then, sure, planned economies will be more performant than market economies What is the logic?
It's not a given that this will remain true forever, although I don't think it's tied to AGI. One could argue that AGI push is the trigger for a massive increase in compute capacity and corresponding decrease in price that might make this kind of thing viable, but that's just wishful thinking, not a fact.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#728You wouldn't charge your CNC Machine taxes for the productive labor it produces that could have otherwise been done by a dozen blacksmiths.
By all means have corporate and sales taxes pertaining to the owner of said tools though. Even as a right-leaning individual, it's become pretty clear to me that corporations pay too low in taxes compared to the broad 'middle class'. Corporate tax cuts don't help the common man. An extra few hundred in their pockets each month certainly would though.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you dig into how property tax is allocated, your tax will only go up if your house appreciates more than similar properties - which usually has something like redevelopment or other externality. It is normally not a fixed percentage of your value, but simply "here's what the county/city paid this/next year, divided amongst the properties proportionate to the value." Some, like sewer, etc, are per-property, but mos…
Right. Property taxes are a combination of fee-for-service for infrastructure, and a "congestion tax" for occupying land that nobody else can use. It's explicitly not a wealth tax because you owe it even if you have 0% equity.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're completely omitting externalised cost, though. As it stands, all this production requires gargantuan amounts of energy that have to come from somewhere, and cause pollution and waste that must be accounted for. As long as these factors aren't solved—if they can be solved in the first place—either the prices for consumers or the manufacturing cost must reflect this, I don't see the increased degree automation a…
That has nothing to do with this, those are things that should still be solved at a much higher level of abstraction. Tax the energy, pollution, waste - those have problems regardless of what caused them.
> […] those are things that should still be solved at a much higher level of abstraction […]
I don't think that makes much sense. If a data center consumes all available electricity in a given municipality, it may provide AI services at a very low cost, but thereby makes the region uninhabitable. There is no way to "solve" this at a higher abstraction level. Or alternatively, consider a factory producing consumer goods, which emits toxic fumes; we can limit the amount of fumes the vicinity of the factory is exposed to by implementing very expensive filters—thus increasing the final price of the goods—or externalise all the negative effects—such as health risks in the population, ecological demise, and subsequently lower property values—to society, achieving a lower final price.
Currently, we often pick the latter option, because it usually has the better profit margin. I agree that it's a systemic issue that must be addressed holistically, but the actual solutions have to be implemented at all levels of the production chain. And this means the cost attached will have to be included in the price of all goods.