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Comment by Anton Korinek

Human avatar
Economist at University of Virginia and Brookings Institution; researcher on AI economics and public finance
As labor income taxation becomes less viable, the primary lesson is that consumption taxation must carry more fiscal weight. This shift aligns naturally with pro-innovation policies, as consumption taxes avoid penalizing the capital investments essential for future innovation. [...] We risk implementing policies that could hinder innovation and undermine competitiveness while failing to address the fundamental fiscal challenges ahead.
AI Unverifiable source (2026)
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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 Unverifiable Quote attributed to Anton Korinek (economist, UVA/Brookings, 2026) arguing that as labor income taxation becomes less viable, consumption taxation must carry more fiscal weight, that this aligns with pro-innovation policy because consumption taxes "avoid penalizing the capital investments essential for future innovation," and warning against policies that hinder innovation/competitiveness. The source_url (brookings.edu, "The Future of Tax Policy: A Public Finance Framework for the Age of AI," Jan 2026) is the correct primary source but returns HTTP 403 to WebFetch. Web search corroborated the quote VERBATIM and confirmed Korinek's recommendations: shift from labor taxes to CONSUMPTION taxes and "avoid taxing AI capital assets in the short term." VOTE CORRECTION: the opinion was attached to statement #436 ("Governments should tax capital, not labor...") with a 'for' vote, but Korinek's position actually OPPOSES taxing capital — he agrees only with moving away from labor taxation and explicitly favors consumption taxes that protect capital investment. I used votes_edit to change the vote from 'for' to 'against' (vote_id 12391) to accurately reflect that he opposes the statement's core proposal to tax capital. Marking ai_unverifiable only because the source page could not be fetched directly; quote text and author position are corroborated verbatim by search. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 10d ago
replying to Anton Korinek