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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?

#901

Post by gamblor956 »

nradov wrote: post #832
gamblor956 wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean that governments should be able to regulate it. That is...literally the point of government... If you meant, that something shouldn't be banned just because it is dangerous, most people would agree with you. But almost everyone would agree that regulation of dangerous things is essential.

No, that's incorrect. You appear to have made a category error. Regulating dangerous things is not the point of government. Please review the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

No, that's incorrect. You appear to have made a basic error. Regulating dangerous things is part of the point of government. Please review the U.S. Constitution.

The preamble of the U.S. Constitution literally states that part of its purpose is to..."promote the general Welfare."

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

#902

Post by machomaster »

erin_lave wrote: post #690
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I run around town smashing windows with a rock, GDP goes up. Computing value more accurately than financial markets is not difficult: the bar is on the floor.

> If I run around town smashing windows with a rock, GDP goes up. I don't believe that's true. I believe that's called the "Broken Window Fallacy" in Economics.

Breaking windows DOES increase GDP, just like the parent said. The argument ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window ) only argues that not all GDP increase is good, because of waste of resources, because of the opportunity cost. That's why measuring success only by GDP is a bad idea.

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

#903

Post by xyzzyz »

unethical_ban wrote: post #781
rayiner wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists generally agree that taxing capital owners is bad policy and taxes should be directed at consumers: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... > Three: Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. > Four: Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For ev…

Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like consumption, so why tax it? Sales taxes discourage velocity of money. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose an income tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower income households.

Because if you're taxing income, you're discouraging production, and discouraging consumption is better than discouraging production.

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

#904

Post by ancillary »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #896
yibg wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or die and pass it to your children. Buy, borrow, die. Kill the step up basis loophole.

No it doesn't work that way. If you pass on the stock options, you pass on the tax burden.

I'm not sure if "options" is the relevant word in your post, but it does seem like capital gains tax is significantly reduced in inheritances? Here's an example source that says the cost basis gets reset to its value at approximately the deceased's death [1], and gains relative to that cost basis are likely much smaller (and thus a much smaller tax burden) than those relative to their initial acquisition price possibly decades earlier, no?

[1] https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/life-events/cost-ba...

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

#905

Post by _DeadFred_ »

Treegarden wrote: post #336
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…

This is not an easy question. It seemingly boils down to: what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? However, the root questions are: what should the state provide, how much, and of what nature? A secondary question then becomes how important the redistributive aspect is. That’s what you’re seemingly alluding to when you say: people work, get taxed on it, but others automate…

Adam Smith and old school Capitalism hate rent seeking though, and when does moving all jobs to AI companies become rent seeking? It definitely destroys the labor/capital relationship part of Capitalism, but it's goal is to also turn the entire economy into rent seeking. Something considered very bad in traditional Capitalist thought. The current path has basically the total destruction of actual Capitalist thought at it's heart.

The problem is that libertarians have been able to retcon their fan fiction into what Capitalism is and gloss over the original anti-rent seeking, anti-monopoly, pro-government oversight parts that Capitalism REQUIRES in order to stay healthy,functioning, and beneficial to society. And people just accept that 'capitalism good' = 'late 20th/early 21st century libertarian fanfiction of what capitalism is' is the definition of Capitalism, when it is very far from it and has zero relation to the functional Capitalism that lifted the world up.

Combining this late 20th/early 21st century fanfiction version of Capitalism with the current tech company goals for AI is something totally new, zero percent Capitalism, and 100% would be hated by original Capitalist thinkers as damaging.

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

#906

Post by Terr_ »

ursAxZA wrote: post #884
Terr_ wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "tax AI" makes as little sense as "taxing Jacquard looms" or "taxing robot factory-arms"... Which are all part of a long-term trend, and attention to that trend is overdue, rather than premature.

Would you be comfortable giving that answer to someone who’s homeless or financially stuck today? I wouldn’t — and that’s the whole point. We talk about tomorrow far more than we talk about what’s happening right in front of us. Quantum computing was ‘just around the corner.’ It wasn’t. Fusion was ‘imminent.’ Still isn’t. I never argued we shouldn’t discuss the future. I said it’s a matter of balance — something I al…

> Would you be comfortable giving that answer to someone who’s homeless or financially stuck today?

What? Why on earth wouldn't I be comfortable talking to people already getting the short end of the economic-stick about how the system has been in need of reform for many years?

If anything, I think you've got it backwards: Good luck convincing them that "we should probably let actual full automation happen" before debating what we want to do about it.

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

#907

Post by nradov »

gamblor956 wrote: post #901
nradov wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's incorrect. You appear to have made a category error. Regulating dangerous things is not the point of government. Please review the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

No, that's incorrect. You appear to have made a basic error. Regulating dangerous things is part of the point of government. Please review the U.S. Constitution. The preamble of the U.S. Constitution literally states that part of its purpose is to..."promote the general Welfare."

That's not what they meant by "welfare".

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

#908

Post by ursAxZA »

Terr_ wrote: post #906
ursAxZA wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be comfortable giving that answer to someone who’s homeless or financially stuck today? I wouldn’t — and that’s the whole point. We talk about tomorrow far more than we talk about what’s happening right in front of us. Quantum computing was ‘just around the corner.’ It wasn’t. Fusion was ‘imminent.’ Still isn’t. I never argued we shouldn’t discuss the future. I said it’s a matter of balance — something I al…

> Would you be comfortable giving that answer to someone who’s homeless or financially stuck today? What? Why on earth wouldn't I be comfortable talking to people already getting the short end of the economic-stick about how the system has been in need of reform for many years? If anything, I think you've got it backwards: Good luck convincing them that "we should probably let actual full automation happen" before de…

I’m talking about balance. Attention is finite. If someone is homeless or struggling, which do you think is more immediately useful to them: food, or a debate about future taxation frameworks?

The obvious answer is both, but in the right proportion. That’s the entire point I’ve been making from the start. If you’re proposing that future-policy talk should take precedence for them, I’m not sure how that adds up.

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

#909

Post by rtkwe »

haroldp wrote: post #846
rtkwe wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've launched dozens of shuttles below the minimum temp threshold before there's no reason to delay this launch... Also that's a singular industry, if the current crop of AI companies deliver what their hype and valuation demands it's a shock across the whole economy not isolated.

> Also that's a singular industry 200 years ago, 95% of the workers in my country worked in subsistence farming. Today, only 2% are farmers. The whole spectrum of labor has turned upside down and upside down again, in that time. It has certainly not been a singular industry.

It was a bunch of small changes over the course of 200 years but yes that's perfectly comparible to the effects needed to justify the valuation put into all the AI companies right now... but I was talking about the issues with comparing it to singular inventions like the cotton gin or jacquard loom that DO largely only affect one industry.

I think it's weird there's so much pushback on the idea that if the hype proves true and it /can/ replace basically any knowledge worker (and potentially drive robots replacing physical laborers) that that would have a bit of a larger effect than inventions that affect some parts of some industries...

There's plenty of space to think it just won't happen (where I'm personally at, at least on the current LLM driven versions) but if it does work the broad spread of the impact would require a huge amount of change all at once.

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

#910

Post by wslh »

Salgat wrote: post #872
wslh wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Neither do we know if things would have turned out better without him.

But we know that there are few winners and past competitors like eBay faded out. It is more extreme with Microsoft: they have survived more market shifts than anybody else, there is no doubt they have something special and at that business level it is difficult to argue that competitors have not tried everything, and the idea of good and bad behaviors is naive at that level. For example, a "good" company such as Sun Microsystems was involved in bribes to gain markets.
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