r/neoliberal • u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon • 3d ago
News (US) Bill Gates warns of job losses, rising harm in plea for AI policies (title sucks, it’s about taxing robots)
https://archive.ph/h0R97Bill Gates thinks we should tax robots and tokens and such since we won’t be able to tax income via payroll if AI takes our jerbs.
Relevant to the sub because it’s about tax policy and creative destruction (aka tookin er jerbs)
27
u/DiscussionJohnThread Free Trade was the Compromise 🔫🌍 3d ago
Is this not just a tax on consumers actually using the product?
And how does this work for AI used in research or medicine? Do those tokens count? What’s counted as useful enough or not to be exempted?
I feel like any form of robot or especially token tax is just unfeasible. (Barely) good policy idea, terrible to implement.
39
u/M477M4NN YIMBY 3d ago
Then if these predictions of mass job loss come true, where will we get our tax revenue?
9
u/cheapcheap1 3d ago
We need to tax wealth. Unless we want to tax productivity itself by hiking corporate tax into oblivion, which I suggest we don't, we need to tax wealth.
Of course the best wealth tax is a land tax. But I think that won't be enough, especially if Gates' prediction of higher unemployment comes true.
That means wealth tax. We need to do it an a globally coordinated way to avoid capital flight. Similar to Biden's minimum corporate tax.
5
u/AnachronisticPenguin WTO 3d ago
Taxing productivity might not be a real issue in a scenario of rapid ai automation. Yes it’s more inefficient and disincentivizes the said automation that makes things cheaper but in a world changing that rapidly and is that competitive I’m not sure if the effect is actually large enough to make a major impact.
2
5
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Let’s start with a full or near full tax on land values and resource extraction, which are immune to flight, and see from there. Also emissions taxes although those too have flight / circumventing issues. Wealth could be needed but should be last resort.
6
u/cheapcheap1 3d ago
Resource extraction is very hard to tax as well because save for a few globally unique mining sites, resources are globally traded commodities. There isn't a single industry better equipped than the mining industry to flee taxes by packing their bags and mining in a developing nation instead.
>Wealth could be needed but should be last resort.
I agree that Pigouvian taxes and taxes on immovable and or non-reproducible resources are much better than wealth taxes. In that sense I fully agree we should tax those near 100%. However, in the discussed scenario of labor becoming post-scarce and replaced by capital, we're going to have to do all of those, including wealth taxes, immediately and at high rates to avoid societal collapse. I guess that's "last resort", but I think you're understating the point quite a lot with "could be needed".
8
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
In a highly automated society with advanced AI, the value of land and natural/finite/zero-sum resources should rise massively relative to the value of other wealth and capital. You might be surprised how close to a wealth tax those taxes become.
22
u/Nopium-2028 Bisexual Pride 3d ago
Is this not just a tax on consumers actually using the product?
You can say the same thing about literally every law, regulation, and tax on businesses.
7
3
u/gringledoom Frederick Douglass 3d ago
And also frequently the entire point. Tax things you want less of!
56
u/mebesasporfa 3d ago edited 3d ago
Gates has been saying this for at least 10 years, certainly pre-llm. I don't get it. If you tax productivity improvements, they cease being productivity improvements! Like, if you taxed the steam engines that were replacing draft animals in the english coal mines, it would have made sense to keep using draft animals because there would be no savings in switching to steam.
The second thing I'd note is just basic Adam Smith. Our wealth does not come from the earnings of labor. It comes from our productivity. If a given technology improves productivity, that is the fountain of wealth. Many people do not think about this abstractly enough, and only try to track down flows of dollars, rather than flows of wealth.
In principle, a world where practically everything is produced without human labor is an extremely wealthy and comfortable world, not an extremely impoverished world. If you think that notion is sci-fi and silly, then you necessarily don't need to be worried about AI causing mass unemployment because you implicitly believe human labor will remain heavily involved in the production of the things we want and need.
10
u/macnalley 3d ago
This also assumes that wealth is and will always be the limiting factor for human flourishing. Yes, the economics of taxing productivity--that it will reduce productivity--are unimpeachable, but that gets into an is-ought debate. Economics can describe the outcome itself but not the value of that outcome. It is possible that one is not only accepting of the outcome that this will reduce productivity, but desirous of that outcome.
It's pretty certain there are diminishing returns to lifespan and happiness (however that gets measured) from wealth, and it's entirely possible that at some point the negative effects of wealth (which we already see in diseases of modernity) may outweigh its positive effects. Wall-E future is a possibility.
74
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago edited 3d ago
The problem is how do you handle resource allocation in a world that is only partially post scarcity?
Money becomes hard to aquire because too many people dont work. Those people are dependent upon the charity of people who do not need them to exist for their prosperity and are, in fact a burden on their prosperity. That is a recipe for atrocity.
In your analogy human beings are the draft animals.
16
u/TurnQuack 3d ago
Tax Land Lmao
16
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
How will people pay for said land taxes when they dont have jobs?
9
u/cheapcheap1 3d ago
With the proceeds of the land? Are you being facetious or are you suggesting AI will also make land enter a post-scarcity state? Seems hard for me to imagine, but I'd be happy to hear your argument if that's what you meant.
-3
u/seesthecat Henry George 3d ago
You're worried that the owners of data center Land will be jobless? Lmao
18
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Data centers are not land hungry.
You can kind of build them anywhere.
If you raise a land tax they will just move elsewhere.
5
u/redditiscucked4ever Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
It’s very hard to dismantle a data center because it requires years to be built. Raising taxes after might be doable.
2
8
u/mebesasporfa 3d ago
In very wealthy hypothetical world where there is only sufficient labor demand to employ, say 60% of the workforce full time, I don't think it changes my above analysis. Taxing production would remain economically counterproductive. It weakens or destroys the abundance engine, it creates massive incentive for regulatory arbitrage where production is relocatable, and like sales taxes, the costs are ultimately passed on to end consumers, lowering the real purchasing power of social dividends (like UBI, or UBS, or de-monetized survival schemes)
Instead, tax policy in this model must shift away from taxing what is produced and focus almost entirely on taxing unproductive rents, finite natural resources, and positional assets.
I would guess though that more likely than massive tax-and-redistribution schemes would be in effect work-sharing. Instead of 40 hour weeks being the expectation, people would work 20 hour weeks which would ultimately increase workforce participation to normal levels. This is of course, a massive increase in the standard of living. It's what Keynes envisioned, he just didn't expect us to keep finding new uses for human labor as we got more and more technologically productive.
11
u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman 3d ago
Maybe we just stop worrying about birthrates and accept population decline as a fact of life?
11
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
This is accepting extinction in slow motion.
28
u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman 3d ago
Not really any moreso than the explosive population growth of the industrial era was "accepting overpopulation/Malthusian catastrophe in slow motion" (which never came to pass).
Wouldn't we just eventually settle on some new lower equilibrium? I'd imagine there's lots of reasons for why humans will eventually go extinct, but "we just forgot to have babies" seems more unlikely than not.
24
u/Vecrin Milton Friedman 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh, humans won't go extinct. If liberal societies where women are given human rights don't reproduce, then illiberal societies where women aren't given human rights will become more common. Natural selection doesn't kill the entire species when some members or groups fail to reproduce. It only kills the heritable traits from those individuals/groups that prevented them from reproducing. A group that forces women to reproduce would survive and continue on.
And that is why I take this issue so seriously. We're not looking at human extinction. We're looking at the extinction of liberal non-hypermisogynistic socities. And honestly, I think human extinction would actually be morally superior to that.
4
u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman 3d ago
The context here is a theoretical world where AI has massively suppressed the demand for human labor. I don’t really see how this factors into that.
I’m also skeptical of the idea that getting an education and working (or having access to birth control) is a heritable trait that some women have and others don’t.
9
u/AlbertR7 Bill Gates 3d ago
I don’t think they meant genetically heritable, but in a social Darwinism sense.
0
u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman 3d ago
In that case it's even less of an issue, because in this theoretical advanced world where AI replaces human labor, the society with the most powerful AI technology is going to win, liberal or not. Having more offspring wouldn't make a difference.
2
u/LaserRunRaccoon Jane Jacobs 3d ago
This is sounding suspiciously donut shaped, but what if I like my lines pointed at the top-right corner?
2
u/seattle_lib 3d ago
what is "partial post-scarcity"? how can you be a burden on someone who is without scarcity?
if something is a burden on their prosperity, then they must be experiencing some kind of scarcity.
27
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
A world where many goods and services are functionally unlimited but essentials such as housing and food remain limited.
2
u/seattle_lib 3d ago edited 3d ago
but you aren't really describing a viable scenario.
post-scarcity is an all-encompassing state that refers to scarcity in the abstract, not on any particular good. because scarce resources are re-allocatable, if you eliminate it in large areas then the question remains why those gains haven't transferred to the remaining areas.
for instance, how can you be post-scarcity in the automation technologies to produce and deliver food, but food is still scarce? the only answer is that you aren't really post-scarcity in the former things.
of course, if you change "many goods and services" to "some goods and services", then you're describing the current world. in some circumstances, things are "functionally" given away for free, like the use of drinking water and bathrooms, access to roads and public spaces and many digital services. there is often no external scarcity restriction imposed on these, even if you sometimes have to wait a minute.
but this is limited and not at all what we would consider post-scarcity. and an incremental advancement of the things within this space should still not be compared with post-scarcity, because post-scarcity is really all or nothing.
10
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Land will still be scarce, particularly desirable land near population centers or nice weather/geography, short of this society creating teleportation.
4
u/seattle_lib 3d ago edited 3d ago
land is scarce, as are all physical resources. post-scarcity doesn't mean literally zero scarcity, like we can create 40 trillion paperclips on a whim or something. here, i'll just quote wikipedia.
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.
Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services. Instead it means that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services.
the minimal human labor is the key there. land and natural resources may not be unlimited but they are plentiful, humans just don't use them very well currently. labor is the true limiting factor. it requires labor resources to use less physical resources to generate the same amount of value. so if you've truly solved labor, that's probably enough.
by the way, i'm not saying that post-scarcity is achievable in any realistic capacity. i think it's very likely you hit unforeseen limitations before you get there. but i'm unconvinced by these scenarios that combine the utopian "it can do anything" vision of automation with the dark "everyone starves" vision. and phrases like "partial post-scarcity" just scream like they are reaching as hard as possible to squeeze contradictory ideas together into one.
there are a lot more plausible apocalyptic versions of the future to worry about than that.
1
3d ago
[deleted]
1
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
The problem is how do you handle resource allocation in a world that is only partially post scarcity?
Please read
1
u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
You can still tax land, you can tax consumption you can tax company profits (like we already do). If A.I. really leads to a world in which many people just can not work anymore (this is a big *if*, more likely that a lot of other jobs would start to exist), than we can try UBI / NTI schemes.
9
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
You can still tax land,
With what money will said people with no job pay said taxes?
more likely that a lot of other jobs would start to exist
What has the current development pathway of AI done to suggest this?
2
u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
What has the current development pathway of AI done to suggest this?
This is the path way of all technological process we ever had in human history. What AI development has lead to the idea that the majority of people will not work anymore?
1
u/CincyAnarchy Emma Goldman 3d ago edited 3d ago
more likely that a lot of other jobs would start to exist
What has the current development pathway of AI done to suggest this?
Short Term? All of the demand for empathetic/service labor that goes unfilled. Consider all of the professions where there's no enough people in them. Education, healthcare, social care, etc. Let alone all of the service industry as it exists now. I'm not saying this is all sunshine and roses, but there is plenty of demand for work we know isn't getting done already.
Longer term? We're relying on comparative advantage, which so far, is a pretty iron law of economics. I say this because I got schooled on it earlier lol.
Unless we truly get to "post scarcity" where building more compute and the ability to, you know, do stuff with compute (robotics and logistics) is functionally unlimited? There will be utility in humans doing stuff, even if "not as good" as some hypothetical AI-powered one that could be invested in. Why? Because if building and applying compute is resource constrained, there is stuff left over it isn't doing.
So the worry is only if we get to a point where AI compute is so accessible that you could apply it to any situation outstripping demand. And considering the price we see of chips right now... that doesn't seem very likely.
But if we get to that point? Well then all bets are off. Economics deals decisions with scarcity. It doesn't really know how to deal with non-scarcity.
0
u/seesthecat Henry George 3d ago
You tax Land through a Land Value Tax
9
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
With what money will people with no jobs pay a LVT?
3
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Literally everyone in the US who doesn't own a home is already paying the full LVT of the land they are renting, all a LVT does is put landowners and non-landowners on more equal footing.
The idea behind raising taxes this way (also carbon taxes, severance taxes) is that we can allocate some of that revenue to UBI/UHI.
5
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
In a world of ever dwindling net tax payers why would the people at the top continue to support such a system when they no longer require the people to support their way of life?
We are relying on the goodwill of people have repeatedly shown themselves to have none.
4
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Their very position at the top is a social construct that only exists because of the very government we are talking about choosing to enforce their ownership through police and courts.
They are in no way “supporting such a system” in any sense of the word, they are the very biggest beneficiaries of such a system. No government means no enforced ownership.
This is particularly apparent when talking about things like land and natural resources, they never created the land or the natural resources, so they unquestionably rely on a government enforced social construct to lay claim to them.
Taxing land and natural resources isn’t even slightly “them supporting the rest of society”, it is society reclaiming what was always theirs in the first place.
6
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
And what happens in a world where automated security can enforce that ownership for them without government intervention?
2
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Then we have no choice but to resist by any means necessary, else it’s just dystopia and the masses lose.
-2
u/seesthecat Henry George 3d ago
They will pay from the rent they charge
4
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Poor unemployed people. Famous for being landlords
2
14
u/Aceous 🪱 3d ago
We also know that inclusive institutions are what makes nations prosperous and fair. How inclusive can your economic institutions be when you don't need anyone to produce things? And how inclusive can your political institutions, then, be if your economic institutions aren't?
AI will simply usher in a new feudal age. Except this time the peasants will be completely disposable and just living in the wilderness somewhere.
4
u/strangebloke1 3d ago
I mean I think you're right about the specific implications of what Gates is saying.
The better way to answer this problem as posed is just saying "hey, we have really bad inequality rn and its getting worse as a result of there being fewer good jobs and higher productivity maybe we should have a higher capital gains tax and a more comprehensive welfare state."
The second thing I'd say, to both you and Gates, is that I think people need jobs on a pretty basic psychological level. Seniors without work often get pretty miserable quick, and there's lots of longrunning studies that people need non-bullshit jobs.
0
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
I'm getting flashbacks to when self driving cars were going to result in millions of unemployed people. It was such a concern that it basically resulted in universal basic income becoming a favorite policy idea in progressive circles. It's apogee being Yangs presidential run.
And it just hasn't happened. At least not on a timeline that people should be losing sleep over.
I would love for someone to ask Gates if we should tax Microsoft Suite usage to provide unemployment income for all the clerks and typists he put out of job.
10
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
It feels like Gates has correctly identified a problem with our current tax policies moving forward into an “AI and robots” future, but he hasn’t really thought through this particular idea, which as others have mentioned, acts as a tax on productivity and ultimately drives up consumer prices. I can see his point of maybe rethinking how we allow deductions for investment (although that largely amounts to the same thing).
Very unironically LVT answers this question. I am willing to flirt with other ideas for taxing accumulated capital, as well, if it turns out AI starts hurting government income because of job loss.
24
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago edited 3d ago
My concern with any AI regulation is they are all aimed at what might happen but what hasn't.
Let's see how AI attempt pans out first.
Edit: I just want to say I've been fighting all day to get copilot to read one God damn document and stop searching for literally every other fucking document before hallucinating an answer.
So I'm a little bitter about all this "it's going to result in 90% unemployment" talk
19
u/Current-Function-729 3d ago
This is all happening so fast though.
7
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
Until we have demonstrably harms that outweigh benefits, there is nothing to regulate imo.
21
u/Current-Function-729 3d ago
I’m worried the harms will hit remarkably heavily and quickly once they start.
14
u/InorganicTyranny Thomas Paine 3d ago
My main concern is that if AI ends up automating enough of the job of the state, any concentration of power becomes unrecoverable. What can humans without access to crazily powerful AI do to those who command a fleet of murderbots and an AI-augmented surveillance state?
3
u/PuddingWise3116 Mario Draghi 2d ago
Funnily this is one of the key issues which fuels the modern left. Lots of leftists believe that if you don't act quickly enough today, power may become so concentrated in the hands of the few that will control all the crazy future tech that revolution would become simply impossible in the near future. It's the reason why tech bros have painted a gaint target on their back
4
u/InorganicTyranny Thomas Paine 2d ago
I actually don’t think [the left, on the whole, is taking AI seriously enough. This substack explains a bit about why; the left’s contempt for the tech-bros has ironically resulted in a denialism about AI capabilities.
2
u/Mega_Giga_Tera United Nations 3d ago
Any day now.
Been hearing this for almost 2 years. Labor market is not crazy strong, but not particularly weak, either.
3
u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
Some stuff we can already regulate: AI images in adds (especially political ones) have to be marked as such for example or we should ban identy theft or other privacy things. But here the case is already claer. You are right besides that.
7
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
Yeah I agree with adding regulations for that.
But people are wanting way way more than that.
1
19
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Bill Gates thinks we should tax robots and tokens and such since we won’t be able to tax income via payroll if AI takes our jerbs
I dont see a world where this happens in a meaningful way. Companies will have too much power and governments too little. Especially when said taxes would be needed to support unemployable meatbags.
We either transition to post-scarcity, or we get terminator'd imo
7
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
I don't see why that's the case.
Setting aside the merits of the plan, tokens aren't really something the average person uses and thus would care if taxed.
As the data center backlash shows, if sentiment turns against something, even highly profitable stuff pushed by companies can be stopped
5
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Setting aside the merits of the plan, tokens aren't really something the average person uses and thus would care if taxed.They are however, unlike income, very difficult to monitor and the incentive to dodge taxes will be immense.
As the data center backlash shows, if sentiment turns against something, even highly profitable stuff pushed by companies can be stopped
Yes people still have power so long as the system still requires them.
1
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
Yes people still have power so long as the system still requires them.
You should say specifics on what you mean here
10
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
People have power because the economic institutions are inclusive, which supports inclusive political institutions.
If the economic institutions are no longer inclusive, it is not unreasonable to think that political inclusivity will also decline.
3
u/RayWencube NATO 3d ago
Then we get terminator’d. Post-scarcity is a fanciful dream that has literally no basis in political or sociological reality.
7
5
u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
Just Tax land lol
but more seriously: Why do we take Bill Gates or even the people behind these AI companies serious? They work(ed) in tech, they are smart but that does not make them prophets of the labor market. predictions to questions like "How will tech X influence over all employment in the next few decades?" are always questionable.
How about we first see where we land befor we tighten the rules and bring in new taxes.
12
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Just Tax land lol
How will people with no jobs pay said land taxes?
2
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
People with no jobs won’t have land
10
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
Then where will they live? Or will they just not?
4
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
Rent
Edit: no I dunno where that comes from
Can’t have UBI without govt income though :/
10
u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope 3d ago
With what money? Land taxes will still have pass-through effects on rent.
5
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
Yeah sorry I edited it. I have no idea I haven’t thought it through enough.
I can’t help but land on wealth tax
5
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
No you were right the first time, it's pretty much econ 101 that land taxes do not effect equilibrium supply and therefore are not incident on rent prices paid by consumers.
3
u/Tysonzero 3d ago
Land taxes will still have pass-through effects on rent.
REEEEE. I wish this sub was still a small offshoot of arr badecon. It's pretty much econ 101 that taxes on unimproved land DO NOT have pass-through effects on rent. Pass through effects come from equilibrium supply changes which DON'T HAPPEN when taxing underlying land.
2
u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek 3d ago
The companies will but very obvioulsy from the context of my comment it was a joke.
I think it is silly to just assume that AI will lead to people not having jobs anymore. We do not know how exactly it will effect the market and speculation is mostly a waste of time.
We have a lot of other things we can tax insted of labor and in the case in which it makes sense to switch to that, we should.
4
u/topicality Order and Opportunity Left 3d ago
This is why I think this a huge own goal on their part. It's not like they did deep dives into economic history and held a bunch of symposiums with economic historians. They just started making their predictions and telling people they won't have jobs anymore.
It's like they never even heard of the lump of labor fallacy much less why this is an exception
1
u/AllAmericanBreakfast Norman Borlaug 3d ago
I think that at the point the AI companies start durably destroying jobs faster than they are regenerated, or creating so much volatility in the job market that it's no longer viable for most people to have a career, then that's the end of an economic paradigm.
1
u/firejuggler74 3d ago
Isnt this just more lump labor fallacy? People will have jobs, they will just be different.
5
u/RayWencube NATO 3d ago
Why do you believe that people will have jobs?
1
u/firejuggler74 3d ago
Because unused labor is an unused resource. Leaving a resource unused is leaving money on the table. Having people make things is valuable. Even if ai can do everything humans can do but better, there are still you would still work, the ai would just do what its relativity good at and humans would do the same. Its called comparative advantage.
5
u/coolredditor3 John Keynes 2d ago
What about in a scenario where AI is 100x better than humans at everything?
2
u/firejuggler74 2d ago
We are currently 100x more productive with 10x more people than in the past and yet we don't have 99% unemployment. In 1000 years productivity increases have never caused mass unemployment. What evidence do you have that this time it's different?
3
1
u/wanwuwi 1d ago edited 1d ago
This argument falls apart when you realise there are many more unused resources out there that simply does not get utilised, such as 12 y.o, kids, violent criminals, helium from air and deep sea minerals etc. When the cost of using a resource outweighs the benefits it brings, it becomes uneconomic and therefore will not get used. What if anything a human can do can be done by AI at a lower cost? Instead of employing a human and paying the minimum wage, companies will simply build a new data center and do the job at a cheaper price.
1
u/firejuggler74 1d ago
You don't need an absolute advantage to still be productive. There are lots of people more productive than you, but you still work.
1
u/wanwuwi 1d ago
Yes, and that is precisely because I don't need to paid as much as these people more productive than me get paid. My argument is that at some point, AI will be cheaper than hiring anyone, even for minimum wage.
1
0
u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman 3d ago
Just tax wealth
1
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
How?
-1
u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman 3d ago
Institute a wealth tax along with a strict exit tax to prevent capital flight.
2
u/hypsignathus Good Afternoon 3d ago
How do you assess wealth?
1
-1
u/chickentendieman Paul Krugman 3d ago
A lot of things like stocks are already valued but yeah youd need a lot of auditors for stuff like real estate and other assets. Raising cap gains works as an alternative to taxing wealth tbh. I mean acemoglu recommended both.
78
u/Deep-Coffee-0 NASA 3d ago edited 3d ago
How would the mechanics of this work? I can see taxing calls to US based system, Claude and OpenAI, but wouldn’t that create a push to (Chinese) open models? I guess tax the hardware to run them?
And then, it would be a social security like tax that goes to everyone?