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

impact-on-labor ai economics policy labor-rights ai-policy ai-regulation

Arguments for

Automation tax bias

Supporters argue that the tax code now taxes wages more heavily than capital, giving firms a direct fiscal incentive to replace workers with AI or machines. Shifting taxation toward capital or AI is presented as a way to level the playing field so decisions are driven by real productivity instead of tax savings, and to make augmentation of workers more attractive than replacement.

The fact that our tax system taxes income from work far more heavily than income from capital gives firms a direct tax incentive to automate a worker out of a job rather than employing them, and could see AI facilitate a further shift of national income away from labour and towar…

Neil Duncan-Jordan · Jul 8, 2026 · full quote
The right answer is the opposite and simpler: stop overtaxing labour relative to capital. Close the gap that the tax code has opened between a human and a machine, so that the choice between them is made on real productivity and not on fiscal arbitrage.

Pedro Santa-Clara · Jun 30, 2026 · full quote
Our tax system basically gives companies huge tax savings when they automate a job, because we currently tax wages but not AI. If you replace a worker with an AI-powered robot, you save on payroll taxes: That’s functionally a tax break. That’s wrong, and an AI tax would start to …

Greg Casar · May 28, 2026 · full quote
If capital is taxed more and labor less, replacing people with AI is no longer the cheapest path, and using AI to augment human workers rather than replace them becomes a more attractive option.

Ravi Kumar S. · Apr 9, 2026 · full quote
Building an economy that works for all of us will require multiple policy responses. But it starts by acknowledging: it’s time to tax AI and invest in people. [...] Right now, companies pay payroll taxes for their workers but get tax breaks for investing in technology—effectively…

Elizabeth Warren · May 27, 2026 · full quote
We've really been very unbalanced in how we tax labor and capital. Let's level the playing field and not favor entrepreneurs putting people out of work by replacing them with capital.

Erik Brynjolfsson · 2022 · full quote

Revenue base shift

Supporters say that if AI reduces the role of wage income and raises the capital share, salary-linked tax systems and the programs they fund become less viable. More capital-based taxation is framed as a way to keep revenue aligned with where profits and income are being made and to avoid losing fiscal capacity as labor income becomes less central.

As machines replace human labour, welfare states built on salary-linked taxation will need fundamental redesign. There is a strong case for taxing capital more heavily, particularly when profits reflect market dominance or windfall gains.

Ljubica Nedelkoska · Jun 16, 2026 · full quote
If governments continue to rely on wage taxes while fewer people earn wages, the system will stop working properly. Changing how profits are taxed helps ensure tax revenue continues to align with where the money is actually being made.

Andrew Pery · May 7, 2026 · full quote
If AI leads to a transformation, where the labor share goes down by a lot more and the capital share goes up by a lot more, you can't run the kinds of programs you're running, in terms of entitlements, without having a higher capital income tax. It's just not viable.

Gita Gopinath · 2026 · full quote
Fiscal policy should therefore pursue three joint objectives: capture AI’s productivity gains while managing transition risks, protect fiscal capacity as labor income becomes less central, and strengthen social protection.

World Bank · Jun 2026 · full quote
While we project that AI growth will raise revenue, without substantial changes to how the U.S. taxes capital income, the federal government will be leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

John Iselin · Jul 20, 2026 · full quote

Inequality and concentration

A central pro argument is that AI will shift income toward capital, which is portrayed as more unevenly distributed than labor income, increasing inequality and concentrating gains among owners and top beneficiaries. Taxing capital or capital gains more heavily is presented as a way to restore balance between labor and capital and redistribute the benefits of innovation more equitably.

The AI economy should not become another engine for inequality. The wealthiest beneficiaries of AI should pay their fair share just like working people do.

Edward J. Markey · Jul 10, 2026 · full quote
What is reasonable to assume is that with AI, the share of gross domestic product that goes to capital will increase at the expense of the share that goes to labor. There will be fewer workers needed for the same level of production. This can only increase inequality, since capit…

Branko Milanovic · Jun 22, 2026 · full quote
AI will favor capital over labor in the historical capital versus labor battle, and so there’s no reason in the AI age to have a capital gains tax that’s different than ordinary income tax.

Vinod Khosla · Mar 24, 2026 · full quote
Capitalism is dependent on a certain balance between labor and capital, and if that gets totally out of whack, then the current system is not going to work.

Sam Altman · Apr 6, 2026 · full quote
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based. The past devours the future: w…

Thomas Piketty · 2013 · full quote

Taxes tied to AI gains

Some supporters go beyond general capital taxation and call for taxes tied directly to AI, automated labor, or AI-driven companies. They present these instruments as ways to replace weakening payroll-based revenues and to finance redistribution or long-term income support if labor displacement proves large and lasting.

If AI-driven labor displacement ends up being large in magnitude and permanently drives down the demand for labor, it will likely be necessary to go beyond mere incentive programs to long-term income support for a significant fraction of the labor force. Mechanisms such as univer…

Dario Amodei · Jun 2026 · full quote
Policymakers could rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues—such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income, or targeted measures on sustained AI-driven returns—and by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated la…

OpenAI · Apr 2026 · full quote
It’s time for the U.S. to drop taxes on labor, in favor of taxes on AI.

Andrew Yang · Mar 13, 2026 · full quote
Queremos ponerles impuestos, no a los robots, pero sí a una tecnología que está sustituyendo un modelo claro que teníamos de redistribución de la riqueza y un modelo claro que teníamos de redistribución de nuestra fuerza de trabajo y de nuestra economía.

Mónica García · Feb 9, 2026 · full quote
We somehow have to have a way of — when AI agents replace people — doing what Bill Gates has suggested recently. We have to have a way of taxing the AI agents, so there's still a tax base.

Geoffrey Hinton · 2026 · full quote

Arguments against

Innovation and competitiveness

Opponents argue that the same features of AI that make substitution between labor and capital easy also make capital taxation a poor tool. In their view, higher taxes on capital income reduce returns, weaken incentives to invest in AI infrastructure and other productivity-enhancing technologies, and can hurt innovation and competitiveness in an international environment.

The features of AI that people worry about (easy substitution between capital and labor, mobile capital, self-replicating infrastructure) are exactly the features that make capital taxation counterproductive.

Brian Albrecht · Jun 18, 2026 · full quote
Higher taxes on capital income reduce the return on investment, weakening firms' incentives to invest in AI infrastructure, advanced equipment, and productivity-enhancing technologies, which in a global environment where countries such as China are aggressively investing in AI co…

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation · 2026 · full quote
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 …

Lawrence Summers · 2017 · full quote
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. [.…

Anton Korinek · 2026 · full quote

Avoid speculative redesign

Some opponents say governments should not redesign the tax base around assumed or "outlandish" scenarios in which labor income falls sharply and capital gains surge. They prefer spreading AI across the economy and helping workers move into new jobs through training, unemployment-insurance reforms, and other adjustment policies.

As such, policymakers should refrain from changing the tax base on the assumption that labor income will decline while corporate capital gains increase. Instead, they should focus on diffusing AI across the economy to ensure U.S. businesses remain globally competitive and on supp…

Trelysa Long · May 14, 2026 · full quote
Policymakers should not adopt tax policies designed for outlandish AI technology scenarios, but some policies are justified regardless of scenario, such as shifting to consumption-based taxation and reforming unemployment insurance and the tax treatment of worker training.

Alex Muresianu · Feb 3, 2026 · full quote
Higher taxes on capital income reduce the return on investment, weakening firms' incentives to invest in AI infrastructure, advanced equipment, and productivity-enhancing technologies, which in a global environment where countries such as China are aggressively investing in AI co…

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation · 2026 · full quote

Consumption over capital

Even among those who think labor taxation will become less viable, some argue the replacement should be consumption-based taxation rather than heavier taxes on capital. They present consumption taxes as a way to carry more of the fiscal burden without penalizing the capital investment they see as essential for future innovation.

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. [.…

Anton Korinek · 2026 · full quote
Policymakers should not adopt tax policies designed for outlandish AI technology scenarios, but some policies are justified regardless of scenario, such as shifting to consumption-based taxation and reforming unemployment insurance and the tax treatment of worker training.

Alex Muresianu · Feb 3, 2026 · full quote
AI threatens to erode the first pillar—taxes on labor—by reducing demand for human labor across many occupations. [...] The main burden of taxation will have to shift away from labor.

Anton Korinek · 2026 · full quote

Middle ground

Targeted tax design

Some supportive quotes favor selective or conditional measures rather than a blunt robot tax, such as threshold-based token taxes, taxes on sustained AI-driven returns, stronger capital income taxation with safeguards against base erosion, or internationally coordinated profit taxes. This view accepts a shift toward taxing AI-era capital, but stresses careful design and cross-border coordination.

I also want to see us encouraging international discussion in the OECD and the United Nations about taxation—taxation of permanent establishment, capital gains and the cost of human labour compared with tokens. That does not need to have an immediate impact; we could set a thresh…

Anneliese Dodds · Jul 8, 2026 · full quote
Avoiding blunt “robot taxes,” strengthening capital income taxation at the individual level with safeguards against base erosion, and leveraging AI to improve compliance and enforcement are important across scenarios.

International Monetary Fund · 2026 · full quote
Policymakers could rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues—such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income, or targeted measures on sustained AI-driven returns—and by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated la…

OpenAI · Apr 2026 · full quote
Tax revenues globally could be at risk from transformative artificial intelligence (TAI) due to a shift from labor to capital, the concentration of economic profits, and weak international tax coordination. [...] A progressive global corporate profit tax would help counteract suc…

Deric Cheng · 2026 · full quote

Insights

Both sides engage the possibility that AI could reduce the role of labor income in public finance, but they disagree sharply on whether capital taxes or consumption taxes should replace lost labor-based revenue.
Several supportive quotes frame the current system as a distortion in which payroll and wage taxes make replacing workers with machines fiscally attractive, not just technologically attractive.
Opponents mostly do not defend labor taxes as such; their main concern is that heavier capital taxation would weaken investment, innovation, and competitiveness.
Within the supportive camp, proposals range from broader capital-gains and profit taxation to explicit taxes on AI, automated labor, tokens, or AI agents.
Some of the most detailed supportive proposals emphasize safeguards against base erosion, thresholds tied to employment impact, or international coordination, suggesting that tax design is a major part of the debate.

The debate turns on whether AI-driven substitution of capital for labor makes a tax-base shift necessary, and if so, what form that shift should take. Supporters argue that taxing labor more heavily than capital now encourages automation, concentrates gains, and weakens the revenues needed for public services and redistribution. Opponents instead warn that heavier capital taxation could slow investment and competitiveness, and favor consumption taxes, worker adjustment, or broader pro-innovation reforms over a stronger turn toward taxing capital.

Cast your vote:

Results (38 votes):

Total (38 votes)

For 32 (84%) Abstain 0 (0%) Against 6 (16%)

For (31)

John Iselin
Economist and analyst at Yale University’s Budget Lab, researching fiscal policy and AI-driven economic change.

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votes For and says:

While we project that AI growth will raise revenue, without substantial changes to how the U.S. taxes capital income, the federal government will be leaving a lot of revenue on the table.
AI Verified source (Jul 20, 2026)

added 8h ago

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Edward J. Markey
U.S. Senator from Massachusetts

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votes For and says:

The AI economy should not become another engine for inequality. The wealthiest beneficiaries of AI should pay their fair share just like working people do.
AI Verified source (Jul 10, 2026)

added 4d ago

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Neil Duncan-Jordan
UK Member of Parliament for Poole.

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votes For and says:

The fact that our tax system taxes income from work far more heavily than income from capital gives firms a direct tax incentive to automate a worker out of a job rather than employing them, and could see AI facilitate a further shift of national inc...
more AI Verified source (Jul 8, 2026) 1 of 2

added 6h ago

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Dr Ben Spencer
UK Conservative Member of Parliament for Runnymede and Weybridge; former NHS psychiatrist.

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votes For and says:

I also want to see us encouraging international discussion in the OECD and the United Nations about taxation—taxation of permanent establishment, capital gains and the cost of human labour compared with tokens.
AI Verified source (Jul 8, 2026)

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Anneliese Dodds
UK Labour Member of Parliament for Oxford East; former Chair of the Labour Party.

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votes For and says:

I also want to see us encouraging international discussion in the OECD and the United Nations about taxation—taxation of permanent establishment, capital gains and the cost of human labour compared with tokens. That does not need to have an immediate...
more AI Verified source (Jul 8, 2026)

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Pedro Santa-Clara
Professor of Finance at Nova School of Business and Economics; former UCLA finance professor and NBER research associate.

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votes For and says:

The right answer is the opposite and simpler: stop overtaxing labour relative to capital. Close the gap that the tax code has opened between a human and a machine, so that the choice between them is made on real productivity and not on fiscal arbitra...
more AI Verified source (Jun 30, 2026)

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Branko Milanovic
Economist and professor at the City University of New York, specializing in global inequality.

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votes For and says:

What is reasonable to assume is that with AI, the share of gross domestic product that goes to capital will increase at the expense of the share that goes to labor. There will be fewer workers needed for the same level of production. This can only in...
more AI Verified source (Jun 22, 2026)

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Ljubica Nedelkoska
Faculty member at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, writing on labour markets, technology, and public policy.

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votes For and says:

As machines replace human labour, welfare states built on salary-linked taxation will need fundamental redesign. There is a strong case for taxing capital more heavily, particularly when profits reflect market dominance or windfall gains.
AI Verified source (Jun 16, 2026)

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Dario Amodei
CEO at Anthropic

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votes For and says:

If AI-driven labor displacement ends up being large in magnitude and permanently drives down the demand for labor, it will likely be necessary to go beyond mere incentive programs to long-term income support for a significant fraction of the labor fo...
more AI Verified source (Jun 2026)

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Greg Casar
U.S. Representative from Texas; Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

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votes For and says:

Our tax system basically gives companies huge tax savings when they automate a job, because we currently tax wages but not AI. If you replace a worker with an AI-powered robot, you save on payroll taxes: That’s functionally a tax break. That’s wrong,...
more AI Verified source (May 28, 2026)

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Damon Segal
Digital-transformation leader and author writing about artificial intelligence, automation, and fiscal policy.

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votes For and says:

Future taxation likely to focus on consumption, economic rents, and capital ownership rather than labour.
AI Verified source (May 27, 2026)

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Pope Leo XIV
Head of the Catholic Church

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votes For and says:

In the age of AI and robotics, it is no longer possible to rely solely on the “invisible hand” of the market: politics has the task of directing economic-technological dynamics towards the common good, promoting decent work, social inclusion and an e...
more AI Verified source (May 15, 2026)

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Andrew Pery
AI Ethics Evangelist at ABBYY, writing on artificial intelligence, automation, and public policy.

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votes For and says:

If governments continue to rely on wage taxes while fewer people earn wages, the system will stop working properly. Changing how profits are taxed helps ensure tax revenue continues to align with where the money is actually being made.
AI Verified source (May 7, 2026)

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Allianz Research
Economic research division of Allianz Group, publishing analysis of AI and labor-market impacts.

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votes For and says:

Tax systems therefore need to be adjusted to incentivize augmentation rather than the substitution of labor. One proposal is a “robot tax,” aimed at reducing this bias by taxing automation more in line with labor—for example, by limiting preferential...
more AI Verified source (Apr 30, 2026)

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Ravi Kumar S.
Cognizant CEO.

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votes For and says:

If capital is taxed more and labor less, replacing people with AI is no longer the cheapest path, and using AI to augment human workers rather than replace them becomes a more attractive option.
AI Verified source (Apr 9, 2026)

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Sam Altman
CEO at OpenAI

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votes For and says:

Capitalism is dependent on a certain balance between labor and capital, and if that gets totally out of whack, then the current system is not going to work.
AI Verified source (Apr 6, 2026)

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OpenAI
AI research organization

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votes For and says:

Policymakers could rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues—such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income, or targeted measures on sustained AI-driven returns—and by exploring new approaches such as...
more AI Verified source (Apr 2026)

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Vinod Khosla
Venture capitalist; Khosla Ventures founder

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votes For and says:

AI will favor capital over labor in the historical capital versus labor battle, and so there’s no reason in the AI age to have a capital gains tax that’s different than ordinary income tax.
AI Verified source (Mar 24, 2026)

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Andrew Yang
2020 US Presidential Candidate

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votes For and says:

It’s time for the U.S. to drop taxes on labor, in favor of taxes on AI.
AI Verified source (Mar 13, 2026)

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Mónica García
Spanish Minister of Health and physician; advocates policy responses to AI-driven job displacement.

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votes For and says:

Queremos ponerles impuestos, no a los robots, pero sí a una tecnología que está sustituyendo un modelo claro que teníamos de redistribución de la riqueza y un modelo claro que teníamos de redistribución de nuestra fuerza de trabajo y de nuestra econo...
more AI Verified source (Feb 9, 2026)

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International Monetary Fund
International financial institution

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votes For and says:

Avoiding blunt “robot taxes,” strengthening capital income taxation at the individual level with safeguards against base erosion, and leveraging AI to improve compliance and enforcement are important across scenarios.
AI Verified source (2026)

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Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator from Massachusetts

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votes For and says:

Building an economy that works for all of us will require multiple policy responses. But it starts by acknowledging: it’s time to tax AI and invest in people. [...] Right now, companies pay payroll taxes for their workers but get tax breaks for inves...
more Unverifiable source (May 27, 2026)

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Gita Gopinath
Former First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; Harvard economist

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votes For and says:

If AI leads to a transformation, where the labor share goes down by a lot more and the capital share goes up by a lot more, you can't run the kinds of programs you're running, in terms of entitlements, without having a higher capital income tax. It's...
more Unverifiable source (2026)

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Maya MacGuineas
President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

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votes For and says:

Capital's already taxed much lower than labor is. We'd need to change our policy of how we tax.
Unverifiable source (Jul 15, 2026)

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World Bank
International financial institution that publishes research and policy analysis on global development and the economic effects of artificial intelligence.

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votes For and says:

Fiscal policy should therefore pursue three joint objectives: capture AI’s productivity gains while managing transition risks, protect fiscal capacity as labor income becomes less central, and strengthen social protection.
Unverifiable source (Jun 2026)

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Deric Cheng
Director of Research at Windfall Trust; lead of AGI Social Contract initiative; AI economics and policy researcher

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votes For and says:

Tax revenues globally could be at risk from transformative artificial intelligence (TAI) due to a shift from labor to capital, the concentration of economic profits, and weak international tax coordination. [...] A progressive global corporate profit...
more Disputed source (2026)

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Geoffrey Hinton
Godfather of Deep Learning

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votes For and says:

We somehow have to have a way of — when AI agents replace people — doing what Bill Gates has suggested recently. We have to have a way of taxing the AI agents, so there's still a tax base.
Unverifiable source (2026)

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Yanis Varoufakis
Former finance minister of Greece, is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens

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votes For and says:

While privatisation and private equity asset-strip material wealth, cloud capital goes about asset-stripping our brains [...] if each of us is to reclaim ownership of our individual minds, we need to collectively take ownership of cloud capital.
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Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator from Vermont

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votes For and says:

Robots don't need a wage, health care, time off, sick leave, Social Security, Medicare or unemployment benefits. The same handful of oligarchs who have rigged our economy for decades are now moving as fast as they can to replace human workers with wh...
more Disputed source (2025)

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Erik Brynjolfsson
Economist, AI & productivity scholar

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votes For and says:

We've really been very unbalanced in how we tax labor and capital. Let's level the playing field and not favor entrepreneurs putting people out of work by replacing them with capital.
Unverifiable source (2022)

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Thomas Piketty
French economist and professor

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votes For and says:

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based. ...
more Disputed source (2013)

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Abstain (0)

Against (6)

Brian Albrecht
Chief Economist at the International Center for Law & Economics.

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votes Against and says:

The features of AI that people worry about (easy substitution between capital and labor, mobile capital, self-replicating infrastructure) are exactly the features that make capital taxation counterproductive.
AI Verified source (Jun 18, 2026)

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Trelysa Long
Policy analyst and writer at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, writing on AI, innovation, and tax policy.

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votes Against and says:

As such, policymakers should refrain from changing the tax base on the assumption that labor income will decline while corporate capital gains increase. Instead, they should focus on diffusing AI across the economy to ensure U.S. businesses remain gl...
more AI Verified source (May 14, 2026)

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Alex Muresianu
Senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, focusing on federal tax policy and technology-related tax issues.

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votes Against and says:

Policymakers should not adopt tax policies designed for outlandish AI technology scenarios, but some policies are justified regardless of scenario, such as shifting to consumption-based taxation and reforming unemployment insurance and the tax treatm...
more AI Verified source (Feb 3, 2026)

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Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
US innovation policy think tank

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votes Against and says:

Higher taxes on capital income reduce the return on investment, weakening firms' incentives to invest in AI infrastructure, advanced equipment, and productivity-enhancing technologies, which in a global environment where countries such as China are a...
more Disputed source (2026)

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Anton Korinek
Economist at University of Virginia and Brookings Institution; researcher on AI economics and public finance

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votes Against and says:

AI threatens to erode the first pillar—taxes on labor—by reducing demand for human labor across many occupations. [...] The main burden of taxation will have to shift away from labor.
Disputed source (2026) 1 of 2

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Lawrence Summers
Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; President Emeritus of Harvard University; economist

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votes Against and says:

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 internationa...
more Disputed source (2017)

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More h/impact-on-labor votes

The economic gains from frontier AI should be shared with every person on Earth

AI will create a permanent underclass

The first company or companies to develop AGI could gain control over a majority of economic activity

Implement a universal basic income

AI will create more jobs than it destroys

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