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

Key insights

Much of the support is not for a single robot tax but for reducing the tax gap between labor and capital or strengthening existing taxes on capital income and excess profits.
Even many skeptical quotes accept worker disruption as a policy concern; the split is over whether taxation should slow adoption, target specific automation decisions, or simply fund adjustment.
A recurring fault line is whether AI mainly substitutes for labor and shifts income durably toward capital, or whether workers will continue to complement new tools and move into new jobs.
Supportive quotes frequently earmark any new revenue for retraining, public employment, social protection, or long-term income support rather than for general revenue alone.
The quotes bring together international institutions, academics, elected officials, companies, and unions, with fiscal sustainability and inequality emphasized more on one side and innovation and competitiveness on the other.

Arguments for

Labor-capital tax neutrality

Supporters say tax systems often burden wages and payroll more heavily than profits, software, and equipment, which effectively subsidizes labor-saving automation. Equalizing the treatment of labor and capital, or lowering taxes on work while tightening capital taxation, would let firms choose between people and machines on productivity rather than tax arbitrage and could favor augmentation over replacement.

Labour income, the main financing source of social protection, is under pressure: population ageing lowers the number of hours worked, while new technologies, in particular AI, may increase capital productivity and lower the labour share of income. [...] Lower relative taxation o…

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) · Sep 9, 2026 · full quote
In the United States, for example, labor income is taxed significantly more than capital income. If a business pays a worker $100, it will have to hand over as much as $30 in tax and spending obligations. But paying $100 for automation equipment leads to a tax burden of less than…

Daron Acemoglu · Jul 28, 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
First of all, our tax system taxes wealth less than it taxes work. That's a problem. That's an even bigger problem now that AI is coming for jobs because there's basically a thumb on the scale, a subsidy in effect from the US government saying, giving you a little more reason to …

Pete Buttigieg · Aug 3, 2026 · full quote
The tax code in the US and many other countries places a heavier burden on firms that hire labor than on those that invest in algorithms to automate work. [...] Policymakers should aim to create a more symmetric tax structure, equalizing marginal tax rates for hiring (and trainin…

Simon Johnson · 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

Preserve fiscal capacity

A central argument is that AI may reduce labor's share of income and weaken the wage-based revenue streams that finance social protection, even as adjustment costs rise. Shifting more revenue collection toward capital income, profits, or AI-linked returns is presented as necessary to preserve fiscal capacity.

Because effective tax rates on labor substantially exceed those on capital, a shift in national income from labor toward capital means the current tax system captures a shrinking share of a growing economy, even as the cost of sustained income support rises. Potential revenue sou…

Anthropic · Jun 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
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
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
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
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

Share AI gains broadly

Proponents also frame stronger capital taxation as a fairness and distribution measure. If AI-driven gains accrue mainly to wealthy investors, large firms, or excess profits, taxing those returns more heavily is seen as a way to spread the benefits of innovation and finance broader public support.

Furthermore, the rise of AI, which appears to reduce the need for workers while requiring huge capital investments both in software and in physical assets such as datacenters, power supplies, and advanced chips, may cause a further large shift in income from labor to capital. [..…

Paul Krugman · Aug 9, 2026 · full quote
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
The report doesn’t endorse a single “AI tax.” Instead, it lays out three broad ways Congress could use the tax code as AI creates enormous new wealth while potentially displacing workers and imposing new costs on communities: Make sure the economic gains from AI are shared more b…

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy · Aug 10, 2026 · full quote
Capital taxation. The average tax on capital income has declined in advanced economies during the past few decades. It is important that countries reverse this trend, especially under a disruptive AI scenario. First, low taxation of capital compared with labor can contribute to e…

United Nations Development Programme · 2026 · full quote
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
In the AI era, a portion of excess profits should be returned to the entire public.

Kim Yong-beom · May 13, 2026 · full quote

Targeted AI transition levies

Some advocates favor explicit levies on robots, tokens, data centers, or AI uses linked to layoffs. In this view, targeted taxes can directly slow replacement incentives and create dedicated funding for retraining, public employment, or community assistance.

I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. [...] The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.

Bill Gates · Aug 26, 2026 · full quote
Corporations are already laying off workers and raking in the profits from AI systems trained on human work – without ensuring workers share in those gains. That's why Congress needs to act now by preparing the economy for AI, creating guardrails so it augments workers instead of…

Sara Jacobs · Aug 7, 2026 · full quote
Congress has a duty to ensure that this technology is not used to deepen wealth inequality, but instead that the economic benefits of AI are shared with working people. As a proud member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I am grateful to have worked with Chair Casar on thi…

Valerie Foushee · Aug 7, 2026 · full quote
And much of the data center buildout is to advance new technologies that could lead to substantial workforce upheaval. The U.S. has been caught flat-footed in the past by the labor impact of major technological shifts. This time, we need to be ready. To address the impacts on com…

Senate Finance Committee Democratic Staff · Aug 5, 2026 · full quote
The legislation would dedicate revenue generated by limiting bonus depreciation for AI data center infrastructure to a National Workforce Transition Fund supporting worker retraining, individual workforce training accounts, employer retention and redeployment grants, tuition assi…

Mark Warner · Jul 21, 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

Arguments against

Investment and competitiveness costs

Opponents argue that taxing capital, compute, or AI infrastructure would raise the cost of productive investment and weaken incentives to build and deploy new technology. They say this would damage productivity, innovation, and international competitiveness while trying to restrain a technology that economies should be diffusing.

Raising the cost of all those innovation- and productivity-enhancing uses of computing would unequivocally harm American productivity, innovation, and global competitiveness. Knowingly imposing these costs on ourselves because of concerns about certain disruptive consequences of …

Max Gulker · Jun 2, 2026 · full quote
We should not respond to AI by taxing capital, compute, data centers, or other forms of productive investment more heavily. And we definitely should not pretend that taxing servers, chips, algorithms, or machine-intensive infrastructure solves the deeper problem.

Vance Ginn · Apr 28, 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
One approach gaining support is to slow the displacement of workers with new taxes on AI services and investments. [...] The challenge these proposals aim to address is real — but trying to hold back the tide is the wrong answer.

Bloomberg Opinion Editors · 2026 · full quote

Uncertain displacement premise

Another objection is that the case for a capital-first tax shift depends on uncertain or exaggerated assumptions about permanent labor displacement and falling labor income. On this view, workers and AI remain complementary, and governments should emphasize diffusion, training, and adjustment policies rather than redesigning taxes around speculative scenarios.

The proposals differ in detail, but they cite the same story: Labor’s share of national income has declined, and AI is accelerating workers’ losses by shifting more economic activity to capital. The tax code makes all of this worse by undertaxing capital relative to labor. Every …

Adam Michel · Jun 18, 2026 · full quote
AI will most certainly change the labor market. But it has not yet changed the complementary relationship between workers and the tools that make them more productive. Taxing the machines is simply a softer version of the Luddite English textile workers who sought to destroy the …

Adam Michel · Jun 18, 2026 · full quote
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
Policymakers should not focus on slowing the development of AI through an AI compute tax; they should focus on helping workers transition to a labor force increasingly augmented by AI.

Meghan Ostertag · Jun 8, 2026 · full quote

Mismatch between tool and problem

Some critics say broad capital taxation does not match the mechanism it is supposed to fix. Because AI-related capital can be especially mobile or scalable, general capital taxes may be ineffective or counterproductive, and if policymakers want to alter firms' layoff incentives they would need a more direct automation-specific measure or a different tax base.

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
“Out of six popular policy fixes, we find that five of them fail,” says Tsoukalas. “In our model, only a tax on automation itself actually changes the calculus. Most of the policy debate assumes displacement will happen and focuses on picking up the pieces. That’s all necessary, …

Gerry Tsoukalas · Jun 10, 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

Middle ground

Broad reform instead of robot tax

Several nuanced sources agree the deeper problem is the tax preference for capital over labor but caution that a standalone robot or compute tax may be too blunt. They favor broader reforms such as taxing capital income, excess profits, or loopholes more effectively, sometimes with safeguards against slowing useful investment.

With AI, although potential compensatory mechanisms such as new tasks and productivity gains are promised, history cautions us that such benefits are neither automatic nor equitably shared. [...] Prominent tax scholars have argued that a new, targeted robot tax is less effective …

Alessandro Crimi · Sep 18, 2026 · full quote
We should first ask why the tax system may make employing people more expensive than using machines. The answer may not be a new tax on robots. Instead, governments could reduce the tax burden on workers, tax capital income and excess profits more effectively, and support workers…

Sumeyye Tuncer · Aug 28, 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
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 pur…

Martha Gimbel · Jul 13, 2026 · full quote
To date, BPC has not taken a position on whether AI should be taxed and does not endorse any particular option in this issue brief. [...] The code treats labor and capital differently: Employers owe payroll taxes on wages, while investments in equipment and software receive more …

Bipartisan Policy Center · Aug 24, 2026 · full quote

Mixed and phased tax shift

Another nuanced position is that the decline of labor-based taxation may require a wider fiscal redesign rather than a simple swap from labor taxes to capital taxes. These sources discuss phased changes and a mix of capital, consumption, rent, or digital-value taxes depending on how the economy evolves.

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
The path forward requires sequential changes: from labor-based to consumption-based taxation in Stage 1, then to direct AGI capital taxation in Stage 2, with rent taxation playing an enhanced role throughout.

Lee M. Lockwood · Jan 2026 · full quote
The societies that thrive in this new economy will not be those that taxed AI most aggressively, nor those that refused to act at all. They will be those that had the foresight to redesign their fiscal architecture before the old one collapsed, shifting from taxing human effort t…

Naseem Naqvi · Mar 22, 2026 · full quote
Future taxation likely to focus on consumption, economic rents, and capital ownership rather than labour.

Damon Segal · May 27, 2026 · full quote

The debate is less about whether AI could reshape labor markets and public finance than about which taxes best respond to that shift. Support in the quotes often centers on correcting a tax system seen as favoring automation and on preserving revenue and broad sharing of AI gains as income moves toward capital. Opposition in the quotes focuses on the risk of slowing investment, misreading the scale of displacement, or choosing a tax instrument poorly matched to the problem.

Cast Your Vote:

Results (113 votes):

Total (113 votes)

For 101 (89%) Abstain 1 (1%) Against 11 (10%)

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For (99)

Robert E. Litan
Economist and attorney; nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution.

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votes For and says:

Alternatively, a second idea suggested by Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Daron Acemoglu (with co-authors Andrea Manera and Pascual Restrepo) is to rectify the current imbalance of taxation on labor and capita...
more AI Verified source (Oct 30, 2026)

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Larry Ellison
Oracle co-founder and chairman

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votes For and says:

We need to change from taxing human labour to taxing value added [...] Because of AI, we will all become so wealthy.
AI Verified source (Oct 28, 2026)

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Marjorie D. Parker
President and CEO of JobsFirst NYC, a workforce-development nonprofit.

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votes For and says:

Currently, our tax systems rely heavily on human wages via payroll taxes. As AI replaces human roles, that tax revenue disappears, even as corporate productivity hits record highs. [...] If we do nothing, the wealth generated by AI will remain concen...
more AI Verified source (Oct 19, 2026)

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MIT Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
MIT research center studying inequality, labor markets, technology, and pro-worker AI policy.

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votes For and says:

The US tax system is biased against workers in favor of machines and algorithms, and has become more so in recent years. Leveling the playing field in the tax code is a necessary step to preserve jobs in the age of AI. [...] Based on their model, the...
more AI Verified source (Oct 2026)

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Alessandro Crimi
Professor at AGH University of Krakow; researcher in AI, computer science, and health economics.

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votes For and says:

With AI, although potential compensatory mechanisms such as new tasks and productivity gains are promised, history cautions us that such benefits are neither automatic nor equitably shared. [...] Prominent tax scholars have argued that a new, targete...
more AI Verified source (Sep 18, 2026)

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Intergovernmental organisation that develops evidence-based public policy standards and analysis.

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votes For and says:

Labour income, the main financing source of social protection, is under pressure: population ageing lowers the number of hours worked, while new technologies, in particular AI, may increase capital productivity and lower the labour share of income. [...
more AI Verified source (Sep 9, 2026)

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Sumeyye Tuncer
Public-economics writer and publisher of My Economics Diary.

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votes For and says:

We should first ask why the tax system may make employing people more expensive than using machines. The answer may not be a new tax on robots. Instead, governments could reduce the tax burden on workers, tax capital income and excess profits more ef...
more AI Verified source (Aug 28, 2026)

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Greg Jensen
Co-Chief Investment Officer at Bridgewater Associates.

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votes For and says:

I would just separate the two things. I think higher taxes on capital, given the concentration of wealth in the US, has a lot of merit to it. But I would separate that point from the point I just made on both the externalities of potentially replacem...
more AI Verified source (Aug 27, 2026)

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Oren Etzioni
AI2 founder; UW professor

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votes For and says:

Here’s where I net out: equalize the tax treatment of labor and capital, which Congress could do next session, and route the proceeds into retraining and into topping up the pay of workers who land in lower-paying jobs.
AI Verified source (Aug 26, 2026)

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Bill Gates
Philanthropist. Founder and former CEO of Microsoft.

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votes For and says:

I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. [...] The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.
AI Verified source (Aug 26, 2026)

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Daryl Spence
Economist at Capital Group with more than three decades covering the U.S. economy.

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votes For and says:

The ones that might change the incentive structure is you could tax capital, obviously, make capital more expensive, rather relative to labor. I don't know if that's a compute tax or an AI tax, or something like that, that would slow probably the dis...
more AI Verified source (Aug 25, 2026)

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Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
Nonpartisan nonprofit tax-policy research organization.

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votes For and says:

The report doesn’t endorse a single “AI tax.” Instead, it lays out three broad ways Congress could use the tax code as AI creates enormous new wealth while potentially displacing workers and imposing new costs on communities: Make sure the economic g...
more AI Verified source (Aug 10, 2026)

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Paul Krugman
Nobel Prize–winning economist and research professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

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votes For and says:

Furthermore, the rise of AI, which appears to reduce the need for workers while requiring huge capital investments both in software and in physical assets such as datacenters, power supplies, and advanced chips, may cause a further large shift in inc...
more AI Verified source (Aug 9, 2026)

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Sara Jacobs
U.S. Representative from California's 51st congressional district

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votes For and says:

Corporations are already laying off workers and raking in the profits from AI systems trained on human work – without ensuring workers share in those gains. That's why Congress needs to act now by preparing the economy for AI, creating guardrails so ...
more AI Verified source (Aug 7, 2026)

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Valerie Foushee
U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 4th congressional district; sponsor of the Protecting Consumers from Deceptive AI Act

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votes For and says:

Congress has a duty to ensure that this technology is not used to deepen wealth inequality, but instead that the economic benefits of AI are shared with working people. As a proud member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I am grateful to have ...
more AI Verified source (Aug 7, 2026)

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Ron Wyden
U.S. Senator from Oregon, Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee; longtime advocate for healthcare and technology policy

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votes For and says:

American communities are rightfully questioning whether the rapid buildout of data centers across the nation will benefit them, as local disruptions rise and Americans grow concerned about the long-term career prospects of millions of workers. These ...
more AI Verified source (Aug 6, 2026)

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Senate Finance Committee Democratic Staff
Official Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, publishing policy analysis and proposals on tax and economic policy.

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votes For and says:

And much of the data center buildout is to advance new technologies that could lead to substantial workforce upheaval. The U.S. has been caught flat-footed in the past by the labor impact of major technological shifts. This time, we need to be ready....
more AI Verified source (Aug 5, 2026)

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Pete Buttigieg
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation; 2020 presidential candidate; Harvard Kennedy School Fellow

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votes For and says:

First of all, our tax system taxes wealth less than it taxes work. That's a problem. That's an even bigger problem now that AI is coming for jobs because there's basically a thumb on the scale, a subsidy in effect from the US government saying, givin...
more AI Verified source (Aug 3, 2026) 1 of 2

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Greg Ip
Chief Economics Commentator at The Wall Street Journal.

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votes For and says:

Artificial intelligence is starting to change that. More than 1,000 economists, including 17 Nobel laureates, were worried enough to sign an online petition ... warning of “large scale job displacement” from AI and pleading for action. ... [O]ne poli...
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Greg Ip
Chief economics commentator at The Wall Street Journal, writing on macroeconomics, economic policy, and the effects of AI on work.

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votes For and says:

Stop taxing capital more favorably than labor.
AI Verified source (Jul 31, 2026) 1 of 3

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Douglas Elmendorf
Economist and professor at Harvard Kennedy School; former Director of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.

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votes For and says:

There’s a reasonable case that with the rise in AI, it’s more important to protect labor demand than to encourage more capital investment, and therefore capital taxes could be higher.
AI Verified source (Jul 31, 2026)

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The Economist
News and analysis with a global perspective.

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votes For and says:

Should artificial intelligence cause mass unemployment, workers will not be thrilled. But neither will the taxman, even if he hasn’t been automated. For most of the past century, rich countries have had simple rules for sharing prosperity: raise mone...
more AI Verified source (Jul 29, 2026)

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Daron Acemoglu
Nobel laureate economist; MIT Institute Professor; author of Power and Progress

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votes For and says:

In the United States, for example, labor income is taxed significantly more than capital income. If a business pays a worker $100, it will have to hand over as much as $30 in tax and spending obligations. But paying $100 for automation equipment lead...
more AI Verified source (Jul 28, 2026)

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Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Federation of trade unions in England and Wales representing working people.

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votes For and says:

HMT should capture productivity gains for public use through wealth taxation, equalisation of capital gains and income tax, review incentives for investment in labour-augmenting technology, and increase the bank surcharge.
AI Verified source (Jul 22, 2026)

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Mark Warner
U.S. Senator from Virginia; former Governor of Virginia; Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee

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votes For and says:

The legislation would dedicate revenue generated by limiting bonus depreciation for AI data center infrastructure to a National Workforce Transition Fund supporting worker retraining, individual workforce training accounts, employer retention and red...
more AI Verified source (Jul 21, 2026)

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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)

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Silviu Pitis
Writer on AI economics, taxation, and citizen-dividend policy.

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votes For and says:

AI threatens to move income from labor to capital faster than any technology before it. Perhaps the best response is to give citizens a direct and durable claim on the capital whose returns are replacing their wages.
AI Verified source (Jul 16, 2026)

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Paul Krake
Financial-market strategist, investor, and founder of View from the Peak; author of Growth Without You on AI's effects on work and wealth.

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votes For and says:

The cleanest reform is to reduce the tax penalty on labor while increasing the burden on capital-linked income.
AI Verified source (Jul 14, 2026)

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

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votes For and says:

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 o...
more AI Verified source (Jul 13, 2026)

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Abstain (1)

Bipartisan Policy Center
U.S. nonprofit think tank that develops bipartisan public-policy research and recommendations.

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abstains and says:

To date, BPC has not taken a position on whether AI should be taxed and does not endorse any particular option in this issue brief. [...] The code treats labor and capital differently: Employers owe payroll taxes on wages, while investments in equipm...
more AI Verified source (Aug 24, 2026)

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More h/impact-on-labor votes

Implement a universal basic income

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

AI will create more jobs than it destroys

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

AI will create a permanent underclass

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