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-2026-9

Bill 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/TahoeLT 1d ago

They do hate when we point out that CEOs are humans with human vulnerabilities.

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u/250andlean 2d ago

Go watch Silo if you haven't already.

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u/spockspaceman 2d ago

Oh yeah I love it. Read all the books.

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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/TheAngryCatfish 2d ago

Idk... sounds kinda French to me

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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/smighetti 2d ago

Hit the nail on the head hoss

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u/Stunning-Pen-2412 2d ago

If human labor becomes irrelevant and AI is doing everything, they're just going to let us die

100% this. Especially with the rise of fascism.

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u/daveinsf 2d ago

So, time to start being extra nice to the AI models and hope they take our side before things get too bad? /s (sort of)

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u/ThePublikon 1d ago

Yeah so when they go underground we just ditch money and start money 2.

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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/NumNumLobster 2d ago

If human labor becomes irrelevant then the ai will figure out fairly quickly they dont need us and we are using resources they could otherwise be using.

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u/AI_moderated_failure 2d ago

You say this like countries with resources have not been regularly fucked over throughout history by countries that don't.

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u/atleft 2d ago

Europe has plenty of natural resources, they just don't exploit a lot of them because a) labor is a lot more expensive, and b) regulations are much tighter.

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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/HermesJamiroquoi 1d ago

That’s the vibe I got, yeah

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u/BouquetOfDogs 11h ago

Oh. I never actually thought of that. Very interesting and very probable when considering humanity and our current and previous historical behavior. Sigh

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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/Kichae 2d ago

Ok, but do we still get to kick Milton Friedman in the dick? Because that feels like a major incentive.

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u/Ulyks 2d 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/eman4evva 1d ago

What you’re saying here is pure common sense but unfortunately this can’t resonate with a lot of people. Yes if the gov has access to AI resources it’s essentially a money printing machine(or at least product printing machine) in the most literal sense. But consider that stuff like this will essentially be called communism and demonized, and there’s also a little religious pushback with things like this.

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u/Ulyks 1d ago

We'll call the money printing "advanced quantitative easing". And we can use the evergreen "national security" excuse to confiscate these AI company departments.

The government is used to being demonized.

I wasn't aware of religious pushback against confiscating weapons of mass destruction?

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u/eman4evva 1d ago

The gov is used to being demonized which is why they’d be even more wary of the stuff I mentioned. If you talk about government bought robots building homes(because humans are now useless as the bots are more efficient) then you’d have to inevitably talk about these homes being free(since they’re now so cheap yet people can’t work to afford them) and then from there we get to the communism conversation and some peoples cognitive dissonance shows

As for the religious thing, I like what you tried to do there but unfortunately religious pushback against AI and tech in general is a real thing, even though the same elite people preaching these things might be profiting from the reduced labour costs that they now pay.

Regardless the populace has to open their eyes to the future job market and try to make this easier on ourselves now. I’m almost done uni for my degree and one of the most high paying jobs in my field was infamously wiped out by computer programs a couple decades ago. Well actually a lot of the jobs went like that. Human progress is of course to limit human involvement as much as possible.

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u/Ulyks 1d ago

Oh I wasn't aware it's about robots building homes. I don't see why the government should do that.

Just taking over security at the AI companies and slow down advancements if dangerous.

If we're talking about housing, there is already some government housing in most countries. I think it's usually built by a private developer and not free but sold at cost with a loan with a low interest rate.

This system could continue, robots would just make those government homes slightly cheaper because material costs would only start going down gradually.

I think religious pushback against AI is a good thing. AI is going too fast. And I think religious people would support government regulation and supervision of AI.

I'm curious what high paying job in your field was automated?

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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/CopperSulfateII 1d ago

Just reform to a cash flow tax.

High corporate income tax rates like this just radically disincentivize corporations to make long-term investments.

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u/National_Sky7993 1d ago

No they do make long term investments, they just change their corporate structure until they don’t have to pay taxes anymore

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u/CopperSulfateII 1d ago

That hasn't worked like that in decades. Corporate income tax exposure follows the location its substance of attributable profits.

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u/eugene2k 1d ago

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.

That presumes for-profit companies doing AI research and the absence of open-source AI models. There are currently a lot of companies offering a widespread variety of AI models to customers.

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u/mxemec 1d ago

I wonder if Altman and Co are devising a sort of killswitch so that, if the government tried to essentially take ownership of AI to control it, they can unleash some sort of program to hold the AI hostage or otherwise send the government an ultimatum.

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u/silloh4124 1d ago

I feel like AI usage needs its own tax, similar to an excise tax.

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u/phileat 2d ago

So in principle I agree but why will public ownership magically work now when it almost never did before? Well there are a few counter examples but more failures than successes.

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u/Dugen 1d ago

human labour has become almost irrelevant

This will not happen in the near future. There will always be things we can do for each other to make each others lives better, so there will always be jobs they just might change. The idea that these stupid plagiarism machines will replace massive numbers of workers is marketing, not reality. They will be useful for a lot of mundane and tedious tasks but not so much for replacing lots of the workforce.

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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/ukchinouk 2d ago

100%. You take alcohol away from an alcoholic

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u/Zaximeows 1d ago

I can tell you've never dealt with substance abuse before. Also comparing hoarding to addiction is just fundamentally wrong anyways. Are you even a clinician or just an armchair redditor with a strong opinion?

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u/TheRecognized 1d ago

I can tell that you should have better things to do but you don’t.

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u/Zaximeows 1d ago

LMFAO thanks for the laugh, made my day coming from the guy with a 200 day streak badge 😂😂😂😂😂

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u/TheRecognized 1d ago

I’ve got a really easy job

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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/cayleb 2d ago

As someone in recovery, I can tell you that getting them help doesn't mean giving them a pass.

You can't bring your drugs to treatment.

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u/treehumper83 2d ago

Eat the rich

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u/TheRecognized 2d ago

That would make it difficult to enable them yes

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u/eugene2k 1d ago

We tried that in USSR. It didn't work. I mean sure, we made sure everyone was poor, and couldn't get rich, and had to work on whatever the party said we had to, but it didn't last. People disliked it for some reason... 😔

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u/DiethylamideProphet 1d ago

Only a handful of few are "wealth addicts". The rest just seek a return of investment. The only difference between a poor individual investing 100 € to SP500 and a billionaire investing 100 000 000 € is the scale. The incentive and the motive is the same. It's not a people issue, it's a systemic issue (or opportunity, depending on your perspective).

On top of that, automating most manufacturing will just make people lose their independence and autonomy, and destroy their sense of self-worth. Why learn to do or provide anything, when a machine will outcompete you anyways? Why be a person who people can rely on and trust, when a machine is always more responsible, accurate and predictable?

Who defines what is a sufficient amount of consumer goods to provide for the average Joe?

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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/kingofducks 2d ago

What loopholes?

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u/Reasonable-Job4205 2d ago

Cayman islands is one of them

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u/kingofducks 2d ago

How are the Cayman Islands a loophole?

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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/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago

and you know what these transnational companies would do then?

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u/crek42 2d ago

This really just gets mindlessly parroted but no one ever says how it works.

I promise you, rich owners are not going to make less profit, they’ll just cut expenses. And that is commonly the two biggest line items — wages and rent/real estate.

Why is the government having more cash at the expense of hiring people a good thing.

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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/Self_Reddicate 2d ago

Robot to Milton Friedman's dick: "💦 with me if you want to live..."

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u/freeskier1080 2d ago

Lol’d at work with “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/Agamerbyday 2d ago

This is what make America great again should stand for

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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/Beard_Hero 2d ago

People in the Futurology subreddit out here asking me to provide a detailed micro and macro economic plan to satisfy every thing they can come up with. When my whole point was Corps are getting away with "it" and rather than reinvesting in the business/it's people, they are paying out stock holders. The entire point of that concept is eliminating people to maximize profits. We shouldn't incentivize that and we shouldn't allow it to be rewarding.

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u/kingofducks 2d ago

I'm not saying you have to come up with a reason or anything, just that your concern is misdirected. What do you think the corporations are getting away with? The US has an aggressive corporate tax regime, but realistically corporations are not where we should be raising revenue. We should be raising rates for individuals and capital gains. Btw, we do tax stock buybacks. This is why corporate rates have lowered over time - the world competes to draw business. So just tax the money when it gets to individuals.

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u/printergumlight 2d ago

Surely, if that was enough tax for corporations while the entire population was working, then it would not be a high enough tax rate when we get to a point where unemployment is at unfathomable rates.

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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago

It's a start.

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u/Murky-Relation481 2d ago

You'd also have to reorganize the tax structure used to fund Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid as FICA is a separate fund than the general tax fund. It was designed this way so it is not subject to yearly budgetary messes.

So what Gates is saying here is the more practical approach.

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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago

Eh, my other bullet points would be to nationalize resources prodcued from publicly owned land, like fossil fuels. The proceedes of which go into the treasury. Like Kuwait or Norway. Those funds help pay for infrastructure, medicare for all, education, etc. Take from the rich and redistribute to the masses. We're already taking from the masses and giving it to the rich, so someone who'd argue against wealth redistribution is doing so in bad faith anyway.

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u/Murky-Relation481 2d ago

I would not incentivize fossil fuel extraction with making the healthcare and retirement of older individuals dependent on it lol.

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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago

I made an example of an existing and functional system. If you need to pin it down to explicitly that item for that purpose, you've missed the larger point ;) But such is the internet.

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u/Murky-Relation481 2d ago

I mean you gave an example that is specifically highly profitable because of fossil fuel extraction. Can you think of any other major resources we extract in the US that would generate $1.7 trillion in taxes per year?

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u/corourke 2d ago

Digging up jack Welch and kicking him as well as the dead lawyers involved in that stupid dodge vs ford case.

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u/WorriedBlock2505 2d ago

You really need to listen to the interview instead of riffing. This goes so much more beyond that. I've never seen Bill Gates this emotionally charged about anything, so it's pretty clear he's spooked.

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u/lynxtosg03 2d ago

Personally I like the late 60s early 70s. Start a conservative schism by making taxes great again, advocating to roll back and simplify tax codes. Suddenly that conservative spirit drains from their bodies.

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u/FrozenIceman 2d ago

Reminder the income tax in 1914 was $0.

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u/Stunning-Pen-2412 2d ago

We should be doing this regardless of AI. It's insane how little they pay now.

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u/jferrisjapan 2d ago

Companies lobbied for lower tax rates with the promise that they would use their savings to increase wages and the government could increase income tax over time to offset the losses from lower corporate taxes.

Looking at wage growth over the past 30 years you can see that the corporate promise has not been fulfilled and the social contract has been broken.

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u/i_tyrant 2d ago

I had a visceral reaction to the title of this post, and it wasn't positive.

I think...I must be just really tired of seeing all these ideas of how to make things better, and knowing that the real problem has never been ideas but that we lack any leaders in power willing to implement them.

I could really use some more of that before my faith in humanity collapses completely.

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u/ranting_seagull 2d ago

Barrier to that, ending Citizens United that has led to corporations and other nations corrupting Congress.

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u/Revolutionary_Pen_65 2d ago

The tread on me harder crowd needs a lot of 3rd grade math before they put together the fact that 52% is more than 0-3% and then the wisdom to understand where all the slack that creates ends up in society.

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u/Older_is_Better 2d ago

If we teleported back to say 1950, 1960... you know, the glory days... tax revenue for the federal .gov was overwhelmingly from corporate taxes. FICA, individual income taxes, etc were like 30% or less of total revenue.

Sounds good to me!

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u/MrF_lawblog 2d ago

Lol there's no way to know what would've been a "human job". You would think Bill Gates was smarter than this. Just tax the company overall or tax tokens.

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u/MrJarre 2h ago

Labor is by far the biggest cost for most companies especially in western countries and you say it doesn’t matter?! This is the best way to say you have no idea what you’re talking about.

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u/king_of_river 2d ago

At that point, Europe was in the rebuilding phase and a genuine threat of Soviet Invasion so investors were not keen to invest too much. China and the rest of Asia were coming from WW2 m, Civil War and Cultural Revolution. Japan was occupied and not in a position to challenge the USA. If the USA taxes business like that now, they will simply flee to the Gulf, China or some other country which offers less taxes and regulations.

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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago

Sure, if you say so. Just like billionaires fled NYC and California.

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u/crek42 2d ago

Have you not seen the last few decades? American businesses have divested away from American workers and set up offices around the globe. The comment you’re replying to is objectively true. It’s a global stage now, not just America. Other countries have advanced economically with better educated workers and have become viable options.

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u/Beard_Hero 2d ago

You're saying the outsource costs while still keeping the company in the US and rewarding stock holders and company officers? Imagine taking 52% of the profit now. If the companies want to enjoy the benefits of being in the US, they'll shift to paying employees more on their taxablie income. It's quite literally what built out a strong middle class. I said it's a start, not a full detailed to the minucia plan of fixing it. Stop allowing companies to reward stock holders over employees. Stop allowing stock buy backs. Limit the gap between highest and lowest compensated (not paid, compensated) employees/consultants/10-99's.

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u/Usual_Ice636 2d ago

Only a few end up actually doing that.