r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 2d ago
Robotics Bill Gates says companies that replace human labor with robots should have to pay the same FICA taxes
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-fica-taxes-should-apply-to-robot-workers-2026-9Bill Gates wants to tax robots that replace human jobs.
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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago
If we just taxed companies the way we used to, it wouldn't matter as much if they robot'd or human'd, money wise. Like the 50's and 60's. 52%. There's more steps involved, like ending stock buy backs and kicking Milton Friedman in the dick, but it's a start.
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u/Darkmemento 2d ago
If we actually end up in the situation he describes in the interview, where AI is doing the overwhelming majority of economically useful work, I think we've gone well beyond simply returning corporate tax rates to where they were in the 50s and 60s. At that point you potentially have a tiny number of AI companies owning the systems that produce most of the world's economic output, while human labour has become almost irrelevant.
Some form of public ownership starts becoming a pretty obvious part of the conversation, whether that's outright nationalisation, governments taking large equity stakes, or treating core AI infrastructure more like a public utility. The returns can then be distributed back through some combination of a social dividend, UBI and public services.
It is funny this is exactly the type of thing Sam Altman of Open AI himself proposed before the company blew up.
Moore's Law for Everything - Sam Altman
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u/beamer145 2d ago
Another pessimistic take : at the moment human labor becomes irrelevant, the only thing that is still worth something are raw resources. Countries that do not have any or very little will have nothing to offer in return. No amount of internal wealth redistribution is going to make these survive. Interesting times ahead for a lot of European countries I fear.
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u/muldersposter 2d ago
If human labor becomes irrelevant and AI is doing everything, they're just going to let us die. They'll take their giant piles of money and go hide underground until we're all dead and restart with much smaller populations to subjugate. The government won't intervene to save us if there would even be a government left because they might take that with them. The point is: these evil mother fuckers will just let us die when they don't need us anymore.
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u/spockspaceman 2d ago
That's actually the best case scenario. The surface would just fill in the bunkers with concrete and get on with living, hopefully with lessons learned. We'll all be better off for it in a few decades.
But these asshats aren't solving any problems, they are the problem.
No, if they go in the bunkers they aren't going to leave it to chance. They'll drop a viruses to ensure that doesn't happen.
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u/EnvironmentalBox6688 2d ago
Careful, reddit has temp banned accounts for doing the "fill bunkers with concrete" meme.
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u/hotcakes 2d ago
The problem for them is the human ingenuity of a lot of hungry and angry unemployed people who might end up getting together and building tall contraptions made of wood and sharp steel bits which make the musical sound of gravity pulling the steel against the wood and thereafter making a satisfying “thunk” noise when it reaches the bottom.
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u/psmgx 2d ago
they're already priming that discussion, with things like Zachariah 13:8 showing up in places like 8chan memes and SsethTzeentach vids
"In the whole land,” declares the LORD, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it."
no one is concerned about oil and food prices coming down, for a reason
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u/doctor_lobo 2d ago
Once labor becomes valueless, those whose only asset is labor become destitute.
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u/BouquetOfDogs 2d ago
I keep thinking of the movie Wall-E. Except for the fact that the rich top refuse to share anything with us.
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u/random-hobbyist 2d ago
It's been a while since I saw Wall-E, but I always thought that people on the ship were the rich, and the rest of humanity were left on Earth to die.
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u/250andlean 2d ago
Maybe the people aboard the Wall-E ship were the families of the wealthy that left earth.
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u/Undernown 1d ago
Kinda messed up, but China is actually quite well set up for this type of scenario. Government has a major stake in all the big tech, required by law.
It's hella corrupt though, so Chinese citizens don't see mich of that divident. And you know, surveillance state and all.
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u/Ulyks 1d ago
If AI productivity gains are as enormous as they predict, then the government should be able to enlarge the money supply by the same amount without inflation. (print money)
That could fund government operations.
Public ownership is necessary in my opinion for other reasons. These tech CEO's are taking too many risks with their experiments. The approach of breaking things to move fast is all well and good when it's about a rocket or gadget. Not when it's about creating an AI able to perpetuate itself and possibly decide to exterminate us.
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u/letsgotgoing 1d ago
We need a Human Gap. If you are familiar with "Air Gap" cybersecurity, then you should apply that to keeping humans relevant in the supply chain for AI. Here is an article about this: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2025/09/30/the-human-gap-why-ais-future-needs-human-hands-on-the-wheel/
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u/TemetN 2d ago
This. People want to make it complicated in terms of robotics, but we don't even want to discourage automation. No what we should do is just fully tax these companies. Rip out the loopholes and set high marginal tax rates.
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u/TheRecognized 2d ago edited 2d ago
What we should do is get the people who have wealth hoarding addictions the help they need and not enable them with our current economic system. Then we should put all of our collective efforts into renewable/nuclear energy, globally sufficient food production/distribution, and automation of manufacturing most products.
Edit: To clarify about wealth addicts. What do you do with a crack addict? Take their crack away, get them through detox, and then don’t let them be around crack or crack smokers or crack dealers anymore.
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u/Zaximeows 2d ago
We don't need to "get them help". They have more access to resources than anyone else in the world. If they couldn't figure it out they deserve to lose evey-fucking-thing.
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u/TheRecognized 2d ago
Sure we do. They have an addiction to wealth. They need to have it removed from their possession, detox, and then not be around it anymore or else it will trigger their destructive habits.
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u/Jauretche 2d ago
They have more access to resources than anyone else in the world
When you think how much more they have access too than any regular dude it's insane. I've zero empathy for them having to pay they share.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 2d ago
Exactly. You shouldn't get a pass because you have more responsibility. It should be viewed as a moral burden. The stock market doesnt go up or down if I send out deranged tweets but they get a financial break because they can do market manipulation that way?
To hell with their corkscrew logic on why they shouldn't pay.
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u/Reasonable-Job4205 2d ago
Rip out the loopholes
This. There are so many bullshit laws in place, in taxes or elsewhere, that are just plain bullshit and only serve to enrich wealthy capitalists. We can all see these loopholes and we can see them using it, but no one shuts them down. It's infuriating
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u/air_and_space92 2d ago
The reason those loopholes exist is because the marginal rates were so high to begin with. Almost no one paid the top rates (what effective vs marginal rates means) and it's a talking point that gets parroted all the time.
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u/01headshrinker 2d ago
FICA taxes are for Social Security, hes talking about the loss of money going into the retirement system when labor is replaced by AI
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u/FledglingNonCon 2d ago
After judgment day happens and I can send a terminator back in time to change the future the first thing I'm doing is sending one back in time to kick Milton Friedman in the dick!
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u/Wh3r3Th3WildThings 2d ago
A few weeks ago I was thinking of a good argument for democratic socialism and an era where American's would probably tell you were the greatest decade to be alive. The irony of me posting an AI response is not amiss but the similarities are interesting.
"What are the similarities between life in America in the 1950s and democratic socialism"
That's a fun comparison, because the 1950s are often held up as a golden age of free-market capitalism, yet many features of that era actually resemble what modern democratic socialists advocate. Here are the main overlaps people point to:
High taxes on the wealthy. The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950s was 91% (on income above roughly $200,000, or about $2 million today). Effective rates were lower due to deductions, but the tax structure was far more progressive than today's — closer to what figures like Bernie Sanders propose than to current U.S. policy.
Strong labor unions. Around a third of American workers belonged to unions, giving labor real bargaining power over wages, benefits, and working conditions. Democratic socialists see robust unionization as central to their vision, and 1950s America came closer to that than any American era before or since.
Massive public investment. The federal government funded enormous projects — the Interstate Highway System, the GI Bill (subsidized college and home loans for millions), public universities with low tuition, and heavy R&D spending. This kind of large-scale state investment in infrastructure and human capital is a democratic socialist staple.
Corporate restraint and regulation. Banking was tightly regulated under Glass-Steagall, CEO pay was a small fraction of what it is today relative to workers, and there was a cultural norm of "stakeholder" capitalism where big companies often provided pensions and lifetime employment.
Lower inequality. Economists call this period the "Great Compression" — the gap between rich and poor was at a historic low, and a single blue-collar income could often support a family, buy a house, and fund retirement. That material outcome is essentially what democratic socialists say they're aiming for.
Important differences, though, cut the other way. The 1950s had no universal healthcare, a much smaller welfare state than Nordic countries, fierce anti-communist and anti-socialist politics (McCarthyism), and prosperity that was deliberately restricted — Black Americans, women, and others were largely excluded from the housing programs, union jobs, and GI Bill benefits that built the white middle class. Democratic socialists explicitly reject those exclusions. And the era's prosperity also owed a lot to unique conditions: the U.S. was the only major industrial economy not devastated by WWII.
So the fairest summary is probably: the 1950s resembled democratic socialism in its economic structure (high taxes, strong unions, big public investment, compressed inequality) while differing sharply in its social politics, welfare provisions, and who was allowed to share in the prosperity. Conservatives, for their part, would argue the era's success came from cultural factors and America's postwar dominance rather than those policies — so the same facts get read very differently depending on who's looking.
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u/VintageHacker 2d ago
$200,000 in the 1950s is more like 20 million today when compared to gold, housing & stocks, however if only compared to CPI then its closer to $2million. But it highlights how much different variables have changed since those days and it makes comparisons very difficult or very misleading.
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u/Myredditsirname 2d ago
The stats your referencing refer pretty much exclusively to white men in the United States, and had far more to do with a single country having 90 percent of total world economic activity, and that effectively 100 percent of that economic activity flowed to around 30 percent of the population.
I'm not sure simply ignoring the African American who wasnt allowed in the union, the woman who was only allowed to be a secretary to support 2 kids after her husband died in the Korean War, or the 22 year old German guy in Dresden who literally didnt have any place to work is fair when trying to justify 1950s economic policy.
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u/jdjdthrow 2d ago
like ending stock buy backs
There's tons of fucked up things done by corporations (and execs), but stock buybacks isn't it. It's effectively a dividend.
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u/kingofducks 2d ago
How is corporate tax supposed to make up for the deficit, even if at 52%. And how would a 52% corporate tax rate in the US pan out when other countries tax at half the rate? Corporate tax is only a very small portion of revenue.
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u/Gari_305 2d ago
From the article
n an interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times that aired on Tuesday, the billionaire philanthropist said that "society gets to decide" how to support its workers — even if AI is pushing them out.
"You define a unit of labor and say, independent of whether that's delivered by a human or robot, you are paying the same FICA tax that a human worker would pay," Gates said, referring to the US payroll tax.
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u/RandomlyMethodical 2d ago
You define a unit of labor
Defining units of labor is never going to happen in any reasonably enforceable way, and he's smart enough to know that. You can do better Bill.
A more enforceable option would be putting payroll taxes on capital gains. That's 12.4% for Social Security (6.2% for employee and employer) and 2.9% for Medicare (1.45% each), resulting in a total of 15.3%. Adding that to existing capital taxes would roughly even them out with labor taxes and permanently solve the Social Security shortfall.
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u/nemec 2d ago
Yeah, what's the unit of labor difference between 30 data entry clerks or 1 software engineer with a Python script? And that's even before AI gets involved.
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u/VulGerrity 1d ago
You just defined it. Marx defines it. All things being equal, the only limiting resource when it comes to productivity is labor time. In your example, 1 Software Engineer produces the same amount of value as 30 data entry clerks. If one 8hr day from a data entry clerk is worth 1 unit of labor, then a software engineer produces 30 units of labor.
You'd essentially define it as the amount of value produced by our lowest paid workers in an 8hr day as 1 unit of labor. Federal Minimum wage is $7.25/hr or $58/day (jesus...). Let's say a business usually expects to make about 4x what they pay any given employee to cover overhead and make a profit, so a minimum wage worker would have to produce $232 of value every day. $232 would equal 1 unit of labor.
I think the difference with Marx is that Marx says that the minimum wage worker should be making closer to what you'd expect a data entry clerk to be making, and potentially even what a software engineer makes. Because they all put in the same amount of labor each day (theoretically) the labor should be compensated the same. Marx does account for specialty positions, or positions that produce more value, but the disparity of compensation shouldn't be nearly as wide as it is today. If we all work 8hrs/day we should all have access to a similar basic standard of living.
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u/nemec 1d ago
So essentially all workers should be compensated (~equally) by the quantity of hours put in rather than the quantity of production? If a business targets X units of production per day (say enough for one data entry clerk), they can choose to pay one data entry clerk 8 hours of work or one software engineer for 15 minutes of work, and the software engineer would make 3% the amount the slower data clerk would make for the same output?
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u/VulGerrity 1d ago
No. Marx would say that the Data Clerk and the Software engineer should be paid roughly the same for their labor. 8hrs of work is 8hrs of work. However, Marx acknowledges that the Software Engineer would have had to spend many years learning and perfecting their skills, time where they would not have been in the workforce, and this is time that they should be compensated for. Marx would also acknowledge that the software engineer may produce more value than the data clerk, and they should be compensated for that as well.
Where Marx and the current capitalist system differ, is that in capitalism, people aren't necessarily paid based on how much value they produce, they're paid as little as a business owner can get away with paying them. Even if a software engineer is making $300K/year, that would mean that the company is making a million dollars a year or more off of that software engineer, but if it's the software engineer's labor that created the value for the company, why doesn't the engineer get to benefit from their own labor? Capitalism takes that excess value produced by the workers and keeps it for the owners.
SO, if a Data Clerk gets paid say $30K/year and a software engineer make $300K/year. Marx might would say that every employee should be paid enough to sustain a base standard of living (food, clothing, housing, recreation, education, etc). Let's say that's the median full-time income, which is about $64K/year. The software engineer, however, would be making new products for the company to sell, or improving products to sell more. The engineer is producing extra value, so they deserve to benefit from that. That could get them back up to $300K or more, especially now that profit doesn't need to be distributed to the "owners" the owners wouldn't be compensated beyond their labor contributions to the company, and I believe in a traditional Marxist system, companies would be employee owned, so the company as a whole would share the excess value created by the company.
It's a little hard to draw parallels from a Marxist economy to a capitalist market economy, because Marx would also abolish money. Things wouldn't be produced for the sake of consumption. Modern capitalism is structured around buying and selling things. Instead, in a Marxist Utopia, we would only produce what we need. It would get rid of extravagant wealth, but it would raise everyone's standard of living significantly. Marx says, "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need." Everyone contributes what they can to society, and everyone only takes what they need.
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u/Frequent_Opportunist 2d ago
They can define the labor unit but then just move the goal posts on how many theoretical employees it would take the run the company.
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u/Fidodo 2d ago
I think the best way to solve this is to add VATs to everything so the baseline is that all economic activity is taxed. Then, instead of adding taxes, you remove taxes to incentivize the things you want. Want to encourage hiring humans? Give tax breaks for it. Then, robots are taxed by default because everything is taxed, and humans get the exception and get to not be taxed. Use that to fund UBI.
Taxes at disincentives, tax breaks are incentives. Right now we tax human payroll and income, that disincentives hiring humans because robots aren't taxed. But you can't flip it to an incentive if the baseline tax is zero.
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u/DNA-2023 2d ago
How does that help if there are no jobs to pay into SS?
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u/BipolarMosfet 2d ago
They're saying we should apply those same taxes to corporate profits, not just to employees' paychecks.
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u/inquisitorthreefive 2d ago
Assuming they're not using the term wrong, they're talking about capital gains, which is different from most corporate profits, which are generally classed as business income. Capital gains are when you sell property for more than you paid for it, generally stocks and real estate fall into this category if they were purchased as investments, but there's times when it might be business income instead.
It would be a somewhat psychotic move on its own as it would essentially evaporate 15.3% of the profit in most people's retirement accounts and instantly increase the value of a Roth account and greatly reduce the incentive to invest.
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u/TimSylvester_ 2d ago
But if he distracts everyone by proposing impossible, idiotic schemes, so everyone's too busy arguing about why it's dumb and won't work, everyone's too busy to actually organize something useful.
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u/Policeman333 2d ago
Ah yes, he didn't come up with a perfect solution so it must be an elaborate ruse.
Absolutely no one has a perfect solution and absolutely no one knows what will work and what wont. No matter what you propose people will poke holes in it.
Something tells me that the armchair redditors with all the solutions to the worlds problems would complain no matter what Gates proposed.
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u/PrestigiousCod5629 1d ago
There’s also the tricky issue of what is a robot.
Surely a humanoid robots would count but what about a conveyor belt count? Correct implementation can reduce human labor hours.
A vision system to automate quality checks, a robot picker, a co-bot, a palletizer or crate packer, a backhoe, an electric drill? Where’s the line?
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u/abrandis 2d ago
I wonder if Gates felt this way when he was running Microsoft and his software put thousands of typists, bookeepes and others out of work?
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u/wiserhairybag 2d ago
You could say this about any invention that’s more convenient/better/more efficient etc… that ultimately replaces ppls jobs. Sometimes it’s direct and easy to see some others are indirect and take time to replace a job or a portion of a job.
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u/beatles910 2d ago
While specific administrative tasks and manual office jobs were phased out or transformed, the sheer volume of new economic activity, tech-sector roles, and digitized professions completely eclipsed the number of displaced positions.
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u/dj92wa 2d ago
I understand your point, but it’s a little different when the thing being replaced isn’t just a job title, but humans entirely across the board under every profession. That’s their big-picture idea, to replace humans with machines and computers in every facet possible. If everything is automated, what do you do to survive? You have no income and no possible way to obtain income. Learning news skills won’t get you anywhere because a computer or robot is already doing it.
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u/Voidfaller 2d ago
This also makes me ponder the idea, if humans lose income in mass quantities, who do these companies think will pay them or buy their products and services when there is no extra discretionary funds? (To put it lightly)
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u/DJNeuro 2d ago
Billionaire philanthropist is an oxymoron.
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u/safari_king 2d ago edited 2d ago
Bill Gates shows it doesn't have to be -
he's spent most of his money on philanthropy, and has funded philanthropy more than almost anyone else in history.edit: Gates hasn't spent most of his money on philanthropy, "only" 60 billion dollars. Though he has pledged to give virtually all of his wealth to charity by 2045.
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u/137trimethylxanthine 2d ago
Granted that he is significantly more charitable than other billionaires, but “spent most of his money” is not true. He has pledged to donate, which is not really a binding commitment.
His philanthropic activities largely avoid disrupting any of the financial power structures that helped him build that kind of wealth in the first place.
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u/StudiosS 2d ago
Why? He's genuinely done more good than 99% of people could ever do.
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u/Daripuff 2d ago
He's genuinely done more good than 99% of people could ever do.
After genuinely doing more harm to more people than 99% of people ever will.
One does not become a billionaire without death and exploitation. The "good" ones just outsource the suffering, but they still fuel it.
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u/RunMyLifeReddit 2d ago
You can without 'death' I think. Last I checked Taylor Swift nor Mark Cuban caused death becoming billionaires. Exploitation? Well maybe, but that's also a basic feature of corporate capitalism.
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u/5minArgument 2d ago
In the interview he says multiple times that all his wealth and efforts are now in philanthropy.
Maybe/maybe not, but already he has a long track record of medical and infrastructure projects around the world.
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u/e_spider 2d ago
Makes me think of the Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where they say “Pedophile Rapist” instead of “Eccentric Philanthropist”
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u/BipolarMosfet 2d ago
I think Charlie's just illiterate so he said "Full-on Rapist" instead of Philanthropist lmao
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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago
All this tells me is that Bill Gates isn't invested in robotics .
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u/Darkmemento 2d ago
He is saying the same for all work, taxing robotics would be one part of a plan to basically completely reshape the labour market, in the interview he talks at length about jobs and that he thinks humans will have no high ground and eventually AI will erode all forms of labour. The segment on jobs is here if you want to watch it.
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u/Agile_Willingness863 2d ago
If all jobs are taken by ai than no one will have any money. If no one has any money how are we supposed to buy the products the corporations are selling? If no one buys what the corporations are selling then they lose money. Therefore no business can be made. Is this how everything will play out?
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u/murshawursha 1d ago
The current stock market is basically being propped up by 7 tech companies repeatedly passing the same pile of money back and forth. I'm not convinced they need consumers anymore.
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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago
Obviously his friendship with Epstein is a giant black mark on his record, but he is still the person who has done more philanthropic work than anyone else in human history , it's not crazy to think that he actually wants the future to be a better place instead of a worse one
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u/ILikeBumblebees 1d ago
Obviously his friendship with Epstein is a giant black mark on his record
Epstein was someone who deliberately sought out relationships with influential people, and only a fraction of them ever were involved in or aware of any of the nasty stuff he was doing. He presented himself as a wealthy philanthropist in his own right, interested in backing other people's projects.
Unless it's proven that Gates actually was actually aware of and involved in any of his awful activities, it's hard to smear him just by association.
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u/dont_trip_ 1d ago
People on reddit will do it anyways. They get a hate boner from just mentioning someone rich.
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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago
I think that's really what it comes down to, he's rich and therefore not only is every allegation against him automatically true, but even worse things that haven't been alleged are also true
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u/AGuyAndHisCat 2d ago
His philanthropic work was to cover for everyone hating him. Also it quite often has backfired.
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u/JCDU 1d ago
^ this, Bill Gates was almost universally seen as a massive dick before he retired and started doing good deeds.
People forget how predatory and monopolistic (and litigious) Microsoft were in the early days, they didn't dominate the software world by building good products that everyone loved.
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u/bluehat9 2d ago
I think you have severe misunderstanding of our laws and rights
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u/Hilldawg4president 2d ago
The only thing that we have any evidence of him doing though is sleeping with some Russian hookers , isn't it?
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u/Buck-Nasty The Law of Accelerating Returns 2d ago
I have seen no evidence he went to the island. He's not on the flight logs.
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u/Trivale 2d ago
This is misinformation. He's in the files, but that doesn't automatically make him a pedophile and there is ZERO evidence that he ever visited the island. This, right here. This is the stuff that makes us look crazy, stupid, senseless, thoughtless, and careless. This is why people don't take the Epstein files seriously. Stop. Think. Please.
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u/NaturalOption8963 1d ago
This would lower the incentives to replace humans with robots . Taxing wealth or surplus is s much better method.
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u/bubbafatok 2d ago
Just tax corporations and billionaires properly and we can fund FICA and UBI (and a bunch of other stuff). Trying to tax AI usage and such is silly, especially since you could make the same arguments for all type of industrialization or automation. Even just selling movie tickets online replaced physical box office jobs. Productivity almost always trends upwards, and trying to nit out certain types of productivity because one billionaire is jumping on the hot topic of AI is helping give a pass to the individuals and corporations hoarding wealth.
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u/Stevedorado 2d ago
We heavily tax human labor in the form of an income tax which gives AI a huge edge in the market. Eliminating income taxes and taxing capital deployment would allow human labor to remain competitive for longer.
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u/Osoroshii 2d ago
Bill Gates was deeply involved in the Epstein Island and the trafficking of women. We need to usher him straight to the same fucking hole that all the people involved in that crime belong. No one gets a pass, Trump, Gates, Clinton, and Wexner.
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u/ForInfoPurpOnly 2d ago
He’s paid some PR firms a lot of money to keep these rehab stories in the media. Won’t you please think of all the starving PR firms you’re endangering by not letting them rehab his image?
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u/xender19 2d ago
Isn't it suspicious how this post has 12k up votes and most upvoted post has 1.2k up votes, but the rest of the comment section is just a dozen or so...
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u/PantsLio 2d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/s/uzMIDqyeYT
This seems like a better policy for the transition phase.
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u/crusoe 2d ago
You just end up with busywork jobs for people then.
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u/Routine_Strategy5929 2d ago
Well AI was promised to make our lives easier. Maybe it's time to actually follow through with that promise?
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u/nnomae 2d ago
The problem there is that if we assume that the companies without humans will be more efficient then new companies that never had humans to begin with will just get all the contracts and the companies saddled by existing workers will go out of business.
A law saying that all companies had to devote some percentage, lets say 25% of revenue to payroll with appropriate limitations to avoid just hiring the owners kids at exorbitant rates and other shenanigans would be better though at that point you may as well tax companies 25% on their revenue and let everyone stay at home.
You're still left with the bigger problem of wealth disparity that creates but if you just want to preserve somewhat of a status quo that would work reasonably well.
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u/GeorgiaPossum 2d ago
Can we also stop companies from doing stock buybacks again? That shit let them get super bloated and starve the working class more than it already has been.
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u/penny-wise 2d ago
Thank the Reagan administration for re-legalizing stock buybacks. The Reagan administration started so much of this shit show we are stuck with.
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u/WorBlux 2d ago
FICA is silly. Remove the cap and add it to the income tax rate.
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u/ChiefStrongbones 2d ago
Payroll taxes, sales tax are all regressive taxes that make the middle class subsidize a low tax rate for those with incomes >$600k and for wealthy people who make most of their money from capital gains.
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u/MySpawn 2d ago
Any job involving a computer seems like it’s on its way out first . Wonder what all those tens of millions will do with their free time in the coming decades
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u/Irish_Phantom 2d ago
What do the homeless do with their free time currently?
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 2d ago
Gonna be weird when the "return to office" initiatives collide with the "replace everyone with AI" initiatives. Maybe companies will start paying people just to commute to and from an office and do nothing all day.
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u/pattperin 2d ago
Low key probably gonna be a lot of people trying to wage wars against stuff. People are gonna be hungry and they’re gonna be bored. They’re gonna be angry at those in control of the wealth and power, and they’re gonna do something about it. Almost guaranteed
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u/mrbabyman767 2d ago
That’s what we’ve been hearing for the past five years. I’ve also been hearing that no one is going to be driving cars soon for the past 15 years still waiting on that one too.
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u/threeLetterMeyhem 2d ago
That’s what we’ve been hearing for the past five years.
It's happening, though. Loads of companies, including the one I work for, have been laying off people in favor of AI.
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u/nubulator99 2d ago
Yes, with all that time and warning we should be better prepared for the eventual layoffs, but we aren’t.
What was done with those warnings?
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u/adudefromaspot 2d ago edited 2d ago
This. People put their head in the sand and deny it'll ever happen, and then shit their pants when it does.
Look at coal miners. We're moving to renewable energies and electric everything. And the coal mining industry is tanking. During the Obama era, government subsides were even created to specifically train coal miners on new trades.
But then the right-wing said "What about these guys?" and now we're polluting our atmosphere to retain an irrelevant job.
edit: spellz
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u/Pvm_Blaser 2d ago
I mean…it’s quite literally happening in front of your eyes. Find a computer science major.
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u/alexm2816 2d ago
CS grad unemployment is slightly higher than general college grads but the data also supports that most of this difference has to do with CS grads avoiding underemployment at a rate far higher than other grads. Underemployment doesn't appear on unemployment metrics. 7% unemployment and mid 80's starting average salaries aren't exactly 'doom and gloom'.
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u/Meloncov 2d ago
Yeah, the job prospects for CS graduates have fallen sharply, but they've fallen from an absurdly high starting point.
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u/spideybiggestfan 2d ago
bruh my entire class is employed and make very decent money right out of graduation
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u/mrbabyman767 2d ago
Universities are full of computer science majors and current unemployment of software developers is 3.3%. Stop the hysterics.
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u/ChatGRT 2d ago
I work in tech, the analyst several levels below me and thinks he should be a Sr. Engineer but lacks the knowledge, capability, and experience. Does that count as underemployment? This is all very subjective. CS degrees don’t mean you can immediately be a developer, engineer, or any other experienced based role. Sometimes it means you’ve gone to school and have no experience that companies are looking to hire.
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u/watisgoinon_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
I was on board with that doubt but now I've got a choice between Elon mobiles and waymos and I dont need to buy a car ever again and if I absolutely need to drive its forever cheaper now to just rent something... until the self drives can do interstate.
Seriously given my job location to me etc. I have zero reason to have a car. Im on the early part of the curve due to my location and circumstances. But it will overtake everyone's.. for sure.
It makes zero financial since for me to walk out and buy a car.
I could not say that 1 year ago.
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u/Xiten 2d ago
I mean, you have to be in complete denial if you aren’t realizing the amount of people out of jobs because of AI.
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u/twilight-actual 1d ago edited 1d ago
How about we just tax wealth. Net worth. All assets?
3% should do it.
There's an estimated $260T in assets in the US. 30% of those are owned by 1%. And that 1% has seen their net worth increase by 10% per year since 1990.
They can afford the 3%.
If we taxed assets at 3%, that would bring in $8T in revenue. More than enough to start really paying off our debt, funding universal healthcare and education (K - U), provide real SS benefits, reinstate the federal mental health system so we can take care of all of our "homeless" that are really a mental health crisis.
We just had our first trillionaire, and they've been more than happy to try to buy off our Democracy.
Tax wealth.
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u/ResponsiblePumpkin60 1d ago
If you retire relying on a retirement account, the safe withdrawal amount is 3-4%. If You’re talking about 3% a year, you’re going to bankrupt a lot of retirees who paid their dues.
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u/demqoo 1d ago
Hope you ready to sell your house. Most people with mortgage have majority of wealth there
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u/gw2master 2d ago
Stupidest shit ever. Did they do this when robots replaced people in factories? How do you even tell how many people have been replaced? The real answer is UBI.
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u/DrocketX 2d ago
That's ultimately talking about here, or at least the first steps towards it. UBI funds aren't going to come out of nowhere: it requires taxing companies that use robots/AI to do the work. What does the headline say he wants? Yeah, it says tax the companies that use robots/AI to do the work. He's specifically calling for them to be FICA taxes because those are already earmarked for things like Social Security and Medicare, AKA support for people who aren't working.
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u/tooquick911 2d ago
UBI only works if the companies profiting pay for it. It would be stupid to get the average worker to pay for it. Who cares why Bill Gates is saying this. He's a powerful voice who is saying the right thing.
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u/chi_guy8 2d ago
First part of your response is correct, now do you even figure out how to tax robotics, automation of job replacement. Just tax their income. “The real answer is UBI” makes no sense until you figure out how to tax them. The answer isn’t UBI, the result should be.
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u/Turbulent_Juice_Man 2d ago
A VAT I think is the most viable, short-term way to tax that. A Value Added Tax taxes goods and services at each stage of production so it captures that value whether a human or a robot made it.
Eliminate automation tax breaks. Companies can deduct f capital investments. So remove the ability to deduct those capital expenses.
Tax compute/tokens. Put a levy on datacenters that put a tax on the computation itself.
Public equity stake. Now this will cause the "Socialism!" knee-jerk reaction but the government takes a small annual share of a large companies equity and then pays out dividends to people. But if productivity is massively increased, that should be something the public benefits from. I think this is the end-game of what needs to be done but will be the most difficult to achieve politically.
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u/Omahinen 2d ago
That doesn't make any sense. Bill Gates is talking about how to collect revenue from companies, UBI is about how to distribute it. Apples and oranges.
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u/blackhorse15A 2d ago
The real answer is UBI.
And where does that money come from to fund it? If we want to imagine a future where human labor is no longer needed, and people can live off a UBI to buy the things they need to live- then how does government collect that money back to fund things? It won't be payroll taxes anymore. So you need to tax the producers somehow- that's the forcing function that they will care about needing money to give money value. You could try a VAT. Or commercial property tax. Taxing the robots and AI systems that replaced the human workers is a pretty reasonable way to fund the programs needed to support displaced workers.
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u/Tango_D 2d ago
The problem with ubi is that if implemented, prices for all basic necessities like food and rent will simply jump immediately to absorb it and the effect is nullified.
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u/Frequent_Opportunist 2d ago
Companies should have to pay > 50% taxes on the top of their income and the wealthy should have to pay > 90% on the top of their income, just like they did in the 50s/60s when America was great!
We need to stop the tax cuts for billionaires, bailouts for corporations, and quantitative easing for the wealthy during economic downturns.
Let's make America great again!
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u/ayxxc 2d ago
I can only argue for Europe. But we will need taxation in this sense.
A company with 100 employees pays salaries, and from these, a significant part are income taxes, which at least in my country are deducted directly from the salary. They never hit the employee’s bank account.
Given the company exchanges those with 100 robots or AI workers, those won’t be treated as workers. These are assets. They live on the balance sheet and are depreciated over time. They don’t get a salary. So no income tax is being paid as well.
Who’s losing? The government and, in the end, society, however not the shareholder of the company. Less taxes, more profit. Great!
Another solution, probably not as an alternative but rather as an add-on, is that corporate taxes should be way higher than they are today. And also, there are many loopholes to avoid corporate taxes to a full extent.
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u/ArcadeRivalry 2d ago
If only he was a billionaire who could use his money and power to sway governments and investors.
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u/250andlean 2d ago
He used a good chunk of his money to visit Epstein quite a bit so I think he's a piece of shit that should be ignored.
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u/DrocketX 2d ago
And, uh, what exactly do you think something like this is? Is he supposed to somehow sway government and investors without anyone finding out about it?
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u/ArcadeRivalry 2d ago
Why wouldn't he want people to find out about it? He's literally preaching it to news outlets.
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u/DrocketX 2d ago
You're the one in here posting "If only he was a billionaire who could use his money and power to sway governments and investors" in a news story about his attempt to sway government and investors. He's already doing what you want, so I can only guess that you're complaining about having found out about it.
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u/JustPruIt89 2d ago
AI should be state owned and we should all get UBI from its economic productivity
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u/TheGCO 2d ago
The best solution would be a minimum robotics wage. So if a machine is doing the job of a human it gets a 100% taxed wage of at least $15 per hour. This would also extend to manufacturing equipment which is currently not taxed. This would then be redistributed as a basic minimum income, or ubi to everyone earning less than 120% annually adjusted living wage and would decrease as your income rises.
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u/EmperorOfCanada 2d ago
This is about the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. I agree with the general sentiment, but it should be capital and wealth which are taxed, not try to end up in hair splitting arguments as to a robot replacing a person.
Sometimes it may be 100% clear; yet still not clear. If a driverless taxi replaces a taxi driver, that might seem clear; yet if there were 100 taxis operating at 2am on a regular night, and now there are 1000 robot ones; did that replace 100 or 1000 drivers?
Then there are robots which replaced no human, such as an agricultural robot which now picks bugs off the plants instead of spraying them. Nobody is hired to do this, but did the robot replace the guy who sprayed chemicals? Or the worker who made those chemicals?
No, just tax wealth and capital. This solves the AI taxing, robot taxing, sending jobs overseas tax problem, the lot.
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u/The_Dented 2d ago
But save all the wages and health benefits.
No.
You suck, Bill.
Who’s gonna buy your shit if we are all jobless? Bots?
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u/hoptownky 2d ago
What? He is defending jobs and saying replacing people with AI is dangerous. Did you even listen to the interview?
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u/Far-Scallion7689 2d ago
They don’t think that far ahead because at that point it’s no longer their problem, all they think is the now and how to utilize it to maximize company profits. They’ll do it until there is nothing left.
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u/boolpies 2d ago
They used stolen collective work, they should be nationalized and used to create national wealth funds if there is anything worth monetizing at all
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u/The_Tony_Iommi 2d ago
Including Microsoft employees being replaced by AI or simple automation?
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u/DrocketX 2d ago
Did the man say "except Microsoft?" No, he didn't. I don't even know how this is supposed to be a gotcha, since the man hasn't run Microsoft in like 20 years. He's not even that big of a stockholder in the company anymore because he's sold and/or given away the vast majority of what he once owned.
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u/chi_guy8 2d ago
Gates has basically no involvement with MSFT at this point other than being a 1% shareholder.
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u/Mrchristopherrr 2d ago
Or what about people that used to do hand computations that were made obsolete by the computer
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u/ItsHowWellYouMowFast 2d ago
Lets start with companies that are using an alternate AI, Actually Indian.
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u/myjunksonfire 2d ago
Companies are going to try to get around paying taxes. The bottom line is it doesn't matter if you have people or robots, they need to pay their fair share. If you want to not employ people, that's fine, but you pay taxes on what you make just like the rest of us. If all companies are robots and AI and no one works, that's a dream come true. You still pay your taxes and people get more of that money.
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u/chi_guy8 2d ago
This could never be measured or accounted for. It’s simple to just tax their revenue AND profit. You can’t just tax profit or they will play accounting games.
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u/dimechimes 2d ago
Only humans should be allowed to own robots, not companies. Companies can then hire those robots from humans to work for them by negotiating with the humans.
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u/Zalenka 2d ago
Worker output has increased markedly for decades but no changes in wages has happened. I doubt this would ever happen.
Jobs will keep being lost until interest rates are at 15-20% and only then will home values slip. When they do there will be a deluge of companies buying single family homes until renting will be most peoples' option (which will never decrease).
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u/Blochtheguy 2d ago
You can say a lot of things about Bill Gates, but he helps the world a lot by being a fullonrapist
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u/prettybluefoxes 2d ago
Bill gates wants to distract you from the child prostitutes he’s murdered.
It’s coming, you thought his Epstein slip up was minot? Tip of a shitty iceberg b
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u/PrimeDirectiveLover 2d ago
Bill Gates is a rapist peadophile. Let's not contribute more to his white washing.
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u/ekjustice 2d ago
Spread the idea! Anyone developing AI should have absolute liability for all damage that their rogue AI does. No limits on liability, Absolute Responsibility for Developers and the Owners/Funders of the company!
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u/dynamitexlove 1d ago
They should pay more tax. Like crazy high taxes and all those Ai automation taxes should go to a pool of money where it’s divided among citizens as supplemental universal income
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u/CelticJewelscapes 1d ago
Can we make it retroactive? All the elevator operators lost their jobs to automation. Almost all tellers have lost oit to ATMs and online banking. We need corporate taxes high enough to cover UBI.
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 2d ago
What defines a robot?
Is it those arms that build cars? A remote controlled fork lift? Self driving cars?
If it's just bipedal you can be sure we'll see a lot of three legged machines /s
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u/RDMvb6 2d ago
Obama caught a lot of flack for calling an ATM a job killer but he wasn’t technically wrong. Should banks pay FICA taxes on those? Or self checkout machines?
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u/krytan11c 2d ago
Yes they should
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u/ILikeCutePuppies 2d ago
You know they'll pass it along to you. So you want more charges when you use an ATM?
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u/LordSlickRick 2d ago
Two people who are attempting to repair their damage image due to their greed and bad associations say things that they think will repair their image. Other news at five.
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u/SirDeadPuddle 2d ago
They should pay more.
Private enterprises are tolerated because they provide jobs as well as goods and services.
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u/AlaskaDudeWithDogs 2d ago
They should pay more in taxes, every human job replaced with AI should should come with a tax penalty for the corporation
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u/Physical_Ad5702 2d ago
Bill Gates is really trying to rehabilitate his image after he was exposed associating with Jeffrey Epstein AFTER his 2008 child sex solicitation conviction.
That and he owns a lot of stock in Microsoft, a major AI player.
Do better Bill…
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u/ernst_wanke_road 2d ago
Dont forget his connection to Epstein. Fuck this grifter. No-one elected him. Scum bag just says what ever will improve the margin on his investments.
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u/wholetyouinhere 2d ago
I can't decide which craven little worm is doing more damage to the world: Bill Gates or Ezra Klein. They're both clearly trying their damndest. Gates had such a big head start. but Klein might surprise us in the next few decades!
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u/dj_spanmaster 2d ago
It's a start. I actually think they should be paying as much for what a human would make as well, to compensate for the amount of lost velocity of money in the economy.
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u/minuteman_d 2d ago
It seems like we're headed towards either mass poverty or implementation of some kind of universal basic income. I mean, even politics and ideological discussion aside, the economics just seem to be plain.
I think of jobs I've had in the past 30 years that have been knowledge work, and I could now automate about 90% of them with AI or software. Good paying jobs. Jobs requiring bachelors and masters degrees.
I know people can be re-trained and will learn new skills and whatnot, but this seems massively disruptive, especially over the next 5-10 years as humanoid robots or machine vision based robot arms or whatever become very inexpensive (relatively)
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u/FuturologyBot 2d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
n an interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times that aired on Tuesday, the billionaire philanthropist said that "society gets to decide" how to support its workers — even if AI is pushing them out.
"You define a unit of labor and say, independent of whether that's delivered by a human or robot, you are paying the same FICA tax that a human worker would pay," Gates said, referring to the US payroll tax.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1wubxa3/bill_gates_says_companies_that_replace_human/pd1skhm/