The AI dividend

[gulliver]

I just watched a pretty good Smerconish with Andrew Yang and a guy who is predicting possible 99% unemployment by 2030.

Yang was talking about a "Freedom Dividend" a while back and now he brings up the idea of taxing AI companies to create UBI, universal basic income. To me, that needs to be a political issue. Obviously.

AI needs to pay tax, both income tax and FICA, imo. I thought this about non-AI automation for a long, long time. With AI putting everyone in the same job replacement boat, maybe we can finally do something about making sure all boats rise with the tide.

[ananda]

1. I keep wondering what good AI is if nobody has any money.

!@#$%

[gulliver]

2. Exactly

UBI may finally be getting its chance. It seems to me that AI will make labor cheap. That means products will be cheap too. Very cheap. And, really, there's no reason everyone shouldn't be able to share in that. Yang makes a good point in the clip about it still being capitalism, we just wouldn't be starting at $0 as the base income.

To me, that means we could still do work. It would just be money we could earn over and above a very good universal basic income.

[LiberalArkie]

3. Yes, very cheap to the companies. Those cost savings NEVER go to the purchasers only to the executives

[gulliver]

7. Just make the UBI whatever it takes to pay the cost

I think you're absolutely right that we need to make sure somehow that the benefits of AI don't just go to a few. (And I think the few recognize that, by the way.) Yang talks about it too in the clip. Large majorities of people with zero income and no way to buy things would not tolerate it.

AI with UBI could be a really great thing, kind of like we're all retired comfortably and can do the things we want to do. I just think we should be talking about it a lot. Not just sitting here waiting for the turn of friendly cards.

[LiberalArkie]

12. Universal Basic Income coupled with a wealth tax that is not just income but a person/company assets.

Including stocks. Income tax does not work as the smart ones just take out loans on their stock holdings to live on. No taxes to be paid at all.

[gulliver]

14. It could be an automation tax that functions like income tax

It could be similar to an income tax in the sense that a worker creates output and there is tax on that. For automation, the "workers" would just be robots and AIs. For one thing, that would help level the price playing field between automated labor sources and (human) labor.

As a thought experiment, suppose a company increased production of some good in some supply chain using automation. For tax purposes, we could say that the company might need to pay (at some reduced level to preserve incentive) an imaginary "income" to the automation. Then, they just pay income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicaid) tax on that "income."

[WarGamer]

4. 99% UE by 2030?

[gulliver]

5. Yeah, I clicked the link

Do you think that might be what they intended for me to do? 😄

[WarGamer]

6. exactly!!!

[BH liberal]

8. Science Fiction writers and futurists have been discussing the "robot" issue..

for decades now. Will we get our utopia when AI production frees us from the necessity of being members of the labor force and provides us with a guaranteed income derived from the profits? Or will a dystopia result when all-powerful corporations own both the machinery and the profits from AI production after pink-slipping nearly all of us? Our government has not even begun to deal with this issue yet.

[highplainsdem]

9. There will be no UBI from the tech lords. You really think that the people bribing and flattering Trump

care whether they put almost everyone out of work? Talk of a UBI is just misdirection while they continue to steal whatever they can and vie against one another for the most wealth and power.

If you want to know how fair they'll be, look at their refusal to stop stealing intellectual property, and to compensate those whose IP they've already stolen.

Years ago Sam Altman of OpenAI occasionally talked about a UBI, but he told the journalist who interviewed him for a New Yorker profile that he thought a UBI could be as cheap as several thousand dollars a year for a family of four - not counting the cost of housing. Part of the interview was conducted at a Silicon Valley mansion, which might have had something to do with him not wanting to talk about how people who lost their jobs to AI would be housed.

But he had explanations for the rest. In Sam Altman's imaginary future where people survive on a tiny UBI, we'll have fusion, so power will be free. And free power will mean food will be free (Sam didn't explain exactly how that worked). And people will get any education they need from their smartphones (because, after all, kids staring at smartphones works so well for education).

And it was obvious that his figuring this out left him feeling comfortable with his plans to acquire more and more wealth for himself, and multiple homes including one prepped for the possibility that either robots or other people might go after him.

The tech lords are not planning to share with anyone except other tech lords. No matter how much they steal, or what damage they'll do to the economy. They're already trying to get the government to become responsible for any failures when the AI bubble bursts. The government and the taxpayers whose jobs they want to automate away, and whose intellectual property they want to steal if they haven't already stolen it.

[BH liberal]

10. You can bet that...

any attempts at governmental implementation of universal basic income at the expense of corporations will immediately result in outcries of "Socialism! Socialism!" Corporate owners and executives love socialism for themselves, but not for the rest of us.

[highplainsdem]

11. Exactly.

[Silent Type]

13. All the doomsaying in my life from we are going to die from nukes, computers are going to take our jobs, internet is

going to take our jobs, etc., have proven untrue. AI will too, IMO.

But, if the worst happens, look at all the wealthy people and what their wealth is based on. They make money and increase wealth from us buying cars, bread, soup, potatoes, houses, toys, apartments, signing up for social media, and much more.

They'll figure out some way to keep that flowing or their wealth will disappear because 90% of wealth is based upon paper that is worthless if economy fails as badly as doomsayers predict.