Martha Gimbel on Governments should tax capital, not lab…

Martha Gimbel

Executive Director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University.

We tax capital less than we tax labor in this country, and we also have many loopholes for capital taxation. [...] If some other organization is able to use AI to massively increase their profits, and fire all their workers, and they don’t hire any other workers and it’s just pure capital returns — we don’t get any revenue from that. [...] [I]f the issue is that people are concerned about increasing returns to capital and us not taxing those properly [...] we should figure out how to properly tax returns to capital.

AI Verified (Jul 13, 2026)

Source:

Martha Gimbel, Executive Director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale, in the transcript of the Justified Posteriors episode “No AI Jobs Apocalypse (Yet) - and a Debt Problem (Now),” published July 13, 2026. The excerpt is from her discussion of AI, payroll taxes, capital taxation, and AI-driven job displacement.

20d ago

Policy proposals and claims

Governments should tax capital, not labor, as AI makes human work less central to the economy

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AI Verified The quote contrasts lower capital taxation with labor taxation and says AI-driven firms can fire all workers for pure capital returns; it argues capital taxation should be improved. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago

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AI Verified The quote supports taxing capital relative to labor as AI can replace workers with pure capital returns, matching ‘for’. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago

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AI Verified The July 13, 2026 Justified Posteriors transcript attributes the stored wording to Martha Gimbel; date, author, and wording match. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago

replying to Martha Gimbel

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Martha Gimbel abstains

AI will create more jobs than it destroys

Current evidence points to modest effects of artificial-intelligence tools on jobs.

AI Verified source (Mar 24, 2026)

added 2mo ago

Martha Gimbel abstains

AI will create a permanent underclass

Where we are right now is that AI is not having a large impact on hiring. That's not surprising. [...] Just because something is likely not happening right now does not mean that it can't happen next year, three years, five years [from now].

AI Verified source (Feb 27, 2026)

added 3mo ago