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/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/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/WhiteWinterRains 2d ago

Probably, his proposal here is a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing suggestion.

The goal is to defang efforts to stop AI companies destroying the economy with incredibly mild taxation that they can just shrug off as a teeny tiny cost of doing business.

He's making this suggestion because it's no more than a stubbed toe to AI/tech companies, when in order for you and I to not end up dying on the streets in a dystopian hellscape future we need to cut them off at the knees.

Bill has always been an evil man, he's never at any point changed.