This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Of course it should. An industry run by AI, still needs roads and other public goods. Furthermore, the taxes can go towards UBI, allowing people to help guide the economy with their dollars and to ensure their personal wellbeing.
The big question is when do we remove human CEOs, and use their incomes for the common good?
If you have a robot vacuum, should you pay it minimum wage? It think this is what the argument you bring up
It's definitely written by a modern journalist.
The less-sensational approach would be to ask if the companies using AI should have their taxes raised.
How is paying a robot money in any way equivalent to paying a government to maintain society?
The answer to this post, and almost everything, is to tax the wealthy.
AI is not ruining anything. The people in control of it are.
The answer to this post, and almost everything, is to tax the wealthy. AI is not ruining anything. The people in control of it are.
This is the correct take, right here. Per the article, "“The trend toward automation and AI could lead to a decrease in tax revenues. In the United States, for example, about 85% of federal tax revenue comes from labor income, says Sanjay Patnaik, director of the Center for Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution," It's the working plebs that are carrying the majority of the tax burden.
The rich can pay there fair share, or we can grind them up and feed the slush into a reverse osmosis machine during the water wars.
Should companies using computers in general pay a tax for it, a computer used to mean a human that calculated - computed - things by hand, after all?
But alarm clocks replaced knockeruppers, light bulbs replaced lamplighters, cars replaced coachmen, industrial robots replaced blacksmiths, we have no elevator operators, phone switch boards, traffic conductors, pin boys, link boys, ice cutters, scribes - the list of jobs made obsolete by technology during human history is massive.
Generative AI, while widespread and disruptive, is just one more to the long list.
AI. Is huge capital investments. Just tax the wealth. Any fortune over 10 million has to pay 4% of the gross total per year.
If AI “destroys” jobs, then AI should not only pay taxes, but also contribute to health insurance, unemployment insurance and pension schemes. It doesn't matter who ultimately pays. However, I would hold employers accountable, because they are the ones who are laying off employees in favour of AI.
AI companies: "no"
When computers replaced people are computers paying taxes.
This is a moronic take. Do we also tax tools when they make a 4 person job a 1/2 person job? This is just an ass backwards way of approaching the wealth inequality and poor working conditions issues by focusing on a tool instead of the system itself.
I mean, we easily could.
I pay property tax on my business tools.
So you just extend that concept. I don’t see why not.
ok apparently we do in fact tax tools. And I can see how AI, being on the cloud, might not normally fall under computer equipment or other things that would be taxed, thus needing it to be specifically included in tax law. Fuck me on that one.
I'll give you that.
BUT
I still stand by this being a bandaid to a much larger problem concerning capitalists exploiting the labor of many and not being required to give everyone fair pay/equity. The inequality between the workforce and the ownership class is the problem. Them using AI is just their current tool of oppression, but not their only.
We need to address the root cause and directly tax the billionaires. And remove stock backed loans or at least realize their gains and tax them whenever they do use them as collateral for a loan. Shouldnt be able to claim unrealized gains and use it for collateral at the same time.
Remember, in USA companies are people, so they bribe the government with donations just like people, also money is free speech.
If they are people, they should pay taxes, why not? I say DO IT
I hate that so much. Being "people" they can essentially "out-compete" actual people in the political process. It's very much "anything you can do I can do better". That's why any solution has to target them directly.
And the companies can exist for centuries, acquiring all of that enormous wealth, and "donate" a tiny sliver of it to politicians and watch them fight over the scraps.
I wish we treated corporate crimes as personal crimes committed by the CEO. If they want the cover of personhood, then they get everything that comes with that. See how fast they want to return to being corporations. As it is now, they get the best of both worlds as it suits them.
Yeah, that would be great. Unfortunately, our government is working for them now. This is gonna get weird
AI is ruining our climate, RAM prices, HDD prices qnd more. They should pay a lil extranfor that
climate being ruined long before ai, and the PC hardware is just suppliers being allowed to price-gouge people.
Tax wealth, not work
Tax productivity, not work. Worker productivity has skyrocketed in the past few decades, but taxes have remained constant. So the rich have been able to extract increasing amounts of productivity, while paying proportionally less and less in taxes. Meanwhile, worker wages have remained stagnant, meaning their productivity has gone up but they’re still being paid (and taxed) the same.
Wealth taxes should still absolutely be a thing, but they should be entirely divorced from a work (productivity) tax.
Tax wealth.
That sounds great, but how would you objectively quantify productivity
How much did a company spend to product the widget?
How much is the widget worth?
The difference of those two is productivity
Tax land in particular. Can't hide land easily from tax office.
No, but the companies using it should.
And those hosting it.
Companies:
I’m honestly fine with companies not paying taxes so long as their profits are being spent on people in lower tax brackets.
Current tax structure makes it easy for the company to just give all their profits to their executives.
70% tax on income over $1 million. Go back to a progressive tax structure for company profits. Not sure why my local donut shop is paying the same rate as Microsoft.
AI will have wage?
Why should AI have to pay taxes when we have an ever increasing pool of poors, thanks in large part to AI taking their jobs, to increase the taxes on.. in order to fund AI and to give tax breaks to the trillionaires?
and because there is inevitably going to be someone who fails to understand sarcasm, the heaviest of /s
Because AI is a disruptive technology we should require 40% of gross profits be put into a fund to address its negative externalities.
Joke's on you.
They don't actually make any money. Not unless their a monopoly that's captured regulators anyway.
Externalities? I thought Trump was getting rid of those? ;)
good luck, churches don't even pay taxes
But they're charities that are not for profit...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I think we should just let the billionaires have all of it, they seem to be the ones that need it the most.
Yes because the amount of money being generated by a small group of people and the amount of money we will need not only to support AI but also the masses of underemployed and unemployed people it will create would require it if we maintain a capitalist-ish system that relies on AI and robotics for everything.
Because here's the thing everyone seems to get wrong. Money isn't like firewood, that's something the establishment want people to believe so they can excuse defunding healthcare to fund subsidies for their friends. Money is like electricity. On it's own sat in Scrooge McDuck's Moneypit it has no value, but when it's spent, that's when it creates value.
That's why small businesses are better for the economy than big ones, because when you spend a tenner at a small business, it's more likely to be spent right afterwards, for example, to pay their workers, who then pays the babysitter, who then pays the take out who then pays the supplier. That tenner was spent five times and thus created £50 worth of value, whereas if you just spent it at your local Tesco, chances are that tenner goes to the CEO's bank balance and stays there, not creating any value. Money that isn't being spent is money that doesn't create value. Billionaires aren't billionaires because they make money by working hard, they horde money by using a small amount of their stash to collect even more money, and that money doesn't get used. This is why Trickle Down Economics doesn't work and never will because it takes money out the system.
Now when the amount of money being spent in an economy is low to the point that ventures can't operate properly, that's called a recession. It's why central banks and governments try to get the economy going by putting some of it's own money into the system a bit like trying to get a power grid back online in a Black Start. If the "energy" in an economy is being horded in the bank accounts of an evershrinking collection of people rather than being put into the economy, well, eventually, we're gonna have an economic blackout (recession). This is why Billionaires are terrible for the economy, because they take money out of the economy and keep it for themselves, producing a net loss to the system. If there's less money in the system, there's less value being created.
The Solution? Piñata economics! Make the billionaires put money into the economy to the economy doesn't shut down. Now the Billionaires and their allies have overthrown nations for suggesting they pay a little bit more Tax because they use money as a way to control people and maintain power over their countries and/or interests. This is why Capitalism is more a Political system than an Economic one. The solution, me thinks, would be to turn to the billionaires and say "You can only a maximum of £1 billion in your bank account, if you make £100 billion, that year, you will have to spend £99 Billion. If you still have over £1 Billion in your bank account, we take everything above a billion so you end up with £1 Billion again so we can spend it on things like infrastructure."
If the Billionaire doesn't want to give their money to the government, they can give it to charity or spend it on whatever they want. If they spend it, it creates value (which is good for the economy), if they give it to charity, those charities will spend it on good works, which is good for both society and the economy. They could spend it on their business (which will create jobs and thus, value) but if they don't, let's say they have £2.2 Billion in their accounts, the government gets £1.1 Billion to spend of infrastructure projects, healthcare, and Welfare, all of which will help the economy because Infrastructure allows for economic activities, Healthcare means people can create value and people on Welfare can buy things like food and shelter which, guess what, creates value because they're spending money.
If billionaires are going to make money without employing humans and thus, take more money out of the economy, they should pay more in taxes so the bloody economy doesn't grind to a halt.
No, it shouldn't. The same way as factory machines don't pay it.
They kinda do via taxes that are calculated based on the companies inventory value.
Dumb article.
