If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
31 comments
·December 15, 2025appreciatorBus
bko
Exactly. This is such a silly argument. The article takes the argument "if a lot of jobs disappeared since they are now done effectively for free, what about tax revenue??"
It really misses the forrest from the trees. You're transported into a world in which efficiencies mean that much fewer people need to work, but somehow government services and entitlements are unchanged and we need to hit roughly the same percent federal tax receipts or ... what exactly?
PaulKeeble
Depends on whether they intend to let all of these out of work people who were unlucky enough to be born as a worker starve to death really. They are going to have to find a way to give people a life even if there are no jobs or the paperclip creation doesn't have any buyers. Anyone proposing to just leave a decent percentage of the country to just die is going to face stiff opposition.
smallmancontrov
Elon Musk hasn't taken to counting his Optimus bots in units of "legions" because he intends to let peasants tax him for ubi.
Animats
"In the United States, for example, about 85% of federal tax revenue comes from labor income"
That's the problem. AI has the same tax problems as corporations. But US corporate taxes are historically very low and easy to evade.
jsemrau
Wouldn't higher productivity also lead to higher profits? Which then should be taxed accordingly?
hexasquid
When I was young I imagined a future where nobody had to work because computers and robots could do it all.
agumonkey
the issues is that work, salary was also an indirect way to structure society. want more, think more / work more (or be more cunning). now what we can't use that parameter.. how do we decide
paulryanrogers
I imagine this future could come true, if we're willing to accept that there would be many fewer people.
lovich
Well, we’re in a future where everyone still has to work to live, but the robots are taking the jobs instead
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k310
Takeover artists and hatchetmen destroyed many thousands of jobs. Were they taxed or punished? Hell no, movies were made of them.
Just saying ....
smitty1e
Serious question: when will the AI generate the perfect taxation system/budget combination?
bofadeez
No obviously not. Lots of machines replace workers.
Why would taking scarce resources away from productive businesses and allocating to unproductive things be good for anyone other than government bureaucrats?
harimau777
It would benefit the people you are calling "unproductive things". That's basically the point.
varenc
If full AGI dreams are achieved and 80% of jobs disappear, leading to mass unemployment, then we need to do something to support the huge numbers of people that no longer have any income. Taxes to support a UBI program seem one solution. Or maybe the labor market can shift to find opportunities for humans that AI can't replace and we'd avoid the mass unemployment.
But feels like we're a long way from that right now.
BurningFrog
We have "disappeared" ~97% of jobs since the Industrial Revolution started, and no increased unemployment has materialized.
Until you understand how something that counter intuitive happened, you should not speculate on how AI replacing current jobs will play out!
bofadeez
We don't need taxes to pay a UBI.
If "every country" is in debt, who owns the debt exactly? ... (it's not real debt)
WillAdams
The problem with socialism, is eventually, one runs out of other people's money.
For an example of what unlimited borrowing and money printing results in, look up Germany in 1921--1923
smallmancontrov
> productive
According to the economic notion of value, which is unique among definitions of "value" in being wealth-weighted, enshrining "mega gainz in brokerage accounts" as the ultimate social good while shrugging its shoulders at the plight of the ahem low-weight individual.
bofadeez
Value isn’t something society measures or adds up by people’s bank balances; it’s just how much each individual personally wants something, and markets show this only through voluntary choices, not by declaring rich people’s gains more important than poor people’s lives.
smallmancontrov
If you have lots of money, you can spend lots of money. If you have no money, you can spend no money. Your demand is indeed wealth-weighted in the objective function of the market.
We aren't just talking loaves of bread: as you get more money, you shift from consuming to saving=investing. Your wealth-weighted power stops demanding extra gadgets and starts demanding that stocks, bonds, and real estate go up.
Assets have a counterparty, so policy that pumps assets can do so by encouring genuine growth (difficult, unreliable) or by whacking your counterparty over the head (easy, reliable). Anti-consumer and anti-labor policy makes stocks go up, for example. NIMY policies make real-estate go up. Allowing cross-border labor and environmental arbitrage makes bonds go up.
Once rich people get all of the money (US gini is 0.83, are we there yet?) the objective function of the entire system shifts away from satisfying the needs of people and towards whacking counterparties of assets over the head. It's an ugly thing to see, once you know how to see it.
harimau777
Except that it does declare rich people's gains than poor people's lives.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
CrossVR
Infrastructure is not unproductive, even machines need roads. I don't think self-driving vehicles should be exempt from road tax.
bofadeez
Roads should be (and are in many places) paid for with fuel excise taxes only. The more you drive, the more you pay.
t-writescode
Only if it’s not an electric car. Electric cars need to start paying somehow, too. I’m open to many options, especially including weight * miles driven or similar.
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xg15
Unproductive things like building roads, the electrical grid, water lines, schools, etc?
bofadeez
Fuel excise taxes (roads) and property taxes (local stuff)
nemomarx
I mean this is how all welfare works, isn't it? If as a society we think it's important to reallocate some resources so that people can get food in bread lines, we generally do that.
By this logic owners of wheel barrows should be taxed for all the manual labour jobs the wheel barrow destroyed.