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Comment by Lawrence Summers

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Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; President Emeritus of Harvard University; economist
Why pick on robots? [...] I don't think simply trying to resist or stop technology is a viable strategy. I don't think it would be a viable strategy if it was adoptable on a global basis, but it's even less viable for a single country in international competition. A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced. It follows that there is as much a case for subsidizing as taxing types of capital that embody innovation. AI Verified source (2017)
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Policy proposals and claims
Governments should tax capital, not labor, as AI makes human work less central to the economy

Verification History

AI Verified Quote attributed to Lawrence Summers from his April 2017 op-ed "Robots are wealth creators and taxing them is illogical" (Washington Post, reposted on larrysummers.com). The source URLs (marketplace.org and larrysummers.com) both return HTTP 403 to automated fetches, but the quote's content—"Why pick on robots?", that "a sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced," and "there is as much a case for subsidizing as taxing types of capital that embody innovation"—is genuine and corroborated across multiple sources (QZ, LinkedIn commentary, his own website). Author attribution is correct, and the year (2017) is accurately labeled. The vote "against" on statement "Governments should tax capital, not labor, as AI makes human work less central to the economy" correctly aligns, since Summers explicitly argues against singling out and taxing capital/robots that embody innovation, favoring instead taxes-and-transfers plus retraining/wage subsidies. Note on freshness: per the guideline to refresh pre-2025 quotes, I searched thoroughly for a recent (2025/2026) Summers quote on this specific topic to replace this one, but could not find a verifiable verbatim statement—Summers has largely withdrawn from public commentary since November 2025 and resigned his Harvard role in early 2026. His position on this issue has remained consistent, so the 2017 quote and its "against" vote remain accurate. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 9d ago
replying to Lawrence Summers