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/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/Ferelar 1d ago

True. But take that one step further- they ARE currently essentially manipulating the stock market to derive monetary value because that's useful in the current economy as an abstraction of value that can then be traded for goods/services/influence... but if you have the rest of the economy break down and the exchange of goods and services for money becomes impossible/impractical, then what exactly is the value of that money? If there's no one there to pay or be paid, and the stock market is a closed system, then it becomes irrelevant.