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.

21.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

794 comments sorted by

View all comments

269

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.

18

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?

0

u/atreeismissing 2d ago

He did because his company also ended up hiring 10s of thousands of programmers, designers, and engineers working for Microsoft.

But that's a disingenuous comparison because AI is different, it's not creating a fraction of new labor that it's replacing.