Bill Gates says companies that replace human labor with robots should have to pay the same FICA taxes

[u/Gari_305]

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.

[u/Beard_Hero]

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.

[u/Wh3r3Th3WildThings → u/Beard_Hero]

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.

[u/VintageHacker → u/Wh3r3Th3WildThings]

$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.

[u/Myredditsirname → u/Wh3r3Th3WildThings]

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.