If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

Re:If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? by tempfile on Monday December 15, 2025 @04:48AM (#46272340)

> Automation alone did never reduce jobs significantly.

Unless you mean "all jobs across the entire economy", this is pretty obviously false. People used to weave fabrics by hand, make screws and nails by hand, bake bread by hand. These jobs hardly exist anymore.

Of course this did not imply that all jobs disappeared and the economy collapsed. But the sense in which "AI is not replacing workers" is contingent on specific features of software development, not about automation in general.

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Re:If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? by zkmon on Monday December 15, 2025 @04:55AM (#46272386)

I did mean "all jobs across the entire economy"

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Re:If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? by tempfile on Monday December 15, 2025 @05:21AM (#46272586)

But that suggests that if AI were to displace all programming ever, then as long as there were still some jobs, you would still consider that "AI is not replacing workers". Does that not stretch the meaning of "not replacing"?

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Re:If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? by zkmon on Monday December 15, 2025 @05:28AM (#46272642)

It won't cause significant global unemployment. People would be doing some garbage work and still getting paid, instead of a desk-based white collar work.

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