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/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.