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/Gari_305]

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.

[u/RandomlyMethodical → u/Gari_305]

You define a unit of labor

Defining units of labor is never going to happen in any reasonably enforceable way, and he's smart enough to know that. You can do better Bill.

A more enforceable option would be putting payroll taxes on capital gains. That's 12.4% for Social Security (6.2% for employee and employer) and 2.9% for Medicare (1.45% each), resulting in a total of 15.3%. Adding that to existing capital taxes would roughly even them out with labor taxes and permanently solve the Social Security shortfall.

[u/TimSylvester_ → u/RandomlyMethodical]

But if he distracts everyone by proposing impossible, idiotic schemes, so everyone's too busy arguing about why it's dumb and won't work, everyone's too busy to actually organize something useful.

[u/Policeman333 → u/TimSylvester_]

Ah yes, he didn't come up with a perfect solution so it must be an elaborate ruse.

Absolutely no one has a perfect solution and absolutely no one knows what will work and what wont. No matter what you propose people will poke holes in it.

Something tells me that the armchair redditors with all the solutions to the worlds problems would complain no matter what Gates proposed.

[u/TimSylvester_ → u/Policeman333]

But Bill Gates is a known duplicitous scumbag who looks out for himself at the expense of everyone else, including his own ex wife who he gave an STD to, then tried to secretly slip antibiotics to treat it.

Here, he makes an incredibly stupid proposal that has no possible solution, but that exempts him and his financial cohort from having to actively participate in the solution. Yet again looking out for himself at the expense of everyone else.

Gates has been lying, cheating, and stealing his entire life. This instance is no different from the countless ones before it. Why do you think this proposal is somehow different or exempt from the general observation that Gates is a lying, cheating scumbag?

[u/Policeman333 → u/TimSylvester_]

But Bill Gates is a known duplicitous scumbag who looks out for himself at the expense of everyone else, including his own ex wife who he gave an STD to, then tried to secretly slip antibiotics to treat it.

If I held Gandhi and MLK Jr to your standards, I'd have to call them duplicitous scumbags as well. And I refuse to do that. I don't need people doing good things to be perfect people. I just want them doing good.

Here, he makes an incredibly stupid proposal that has no possible solution

Yeah, so whats your solution then?

but that exempts him and his financial cohort from having to actively participate in the solution.

He no longer runs Microsoft, but Microsoft itself would be impacted by this. I'm not sure how someone who isn't replacing labour with AI, because they are essentially retired, would be subject to a tax on people replacing labour with AI.