Here's the dark side of AI nobody wants to discuss.

Robots don't pay taxes.

We're about to automate 47 million jobs, representing $2.1 trillion in wages.

And replace it with a tax base of $0.

Here’s the problem:

Think about it.

In 2021, Amazon paid just $3.7 billion in taxes on $35.1 billion in income.

A human workforce doing that same work would have contributed tens of billions more in payroll and income taxes.

Now scale that across every single industry.

Projections show AI could displace 30% of the global workforce by 2030.

That's a potential $4.7 trillion loss in annual income tax revenue globally.

Gone.

Poof.

That $4.7 trillion isn't just a number.

It's roads not built.

It's Social Security payments that vanish.

It’s healthcare systems that collapse.

This isn't a future problem. It's happening right now.

So what's the fix?

Some economists are floating a "robot tax."

Bill Gates mentioned it back in 2017.

The idea is to tax the productive output of automated systems.

A tax not on jobs, but on the value created by the machine that replaced the job.

Another idea is a data dividend or UBI, funded by a tax on AI profits.

Think Andrew Yang's "Freedom Dividend" of $1,000/month.

A $1.2 trillion annual program.

But it has to come from somewhere.

This isn't about stopping progress.

It’s about rewriting the social contract.

What happens when corporate profits skyrocket to $100 trillion thanks to AI...

But the tax base that funds society drops by 50%?

What do we do?

This is the conversation we need to have.

Now.

Before it's too late.

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That’s not the worst part. AI doesn’t just affect jobs. AI produces content that shapes:
- what you see.
- how it’s framed.
- what feels true.

Forget crude state propaganda. AI enables:
- tone calibration to your psychology.
- personalised persuasion at scale.
- reinforcement of existing beliefs without you noticing.

It’s not you are being lied to, it’s you are being gently nudged in a direction that feels like your own idea.

Controlled by very few people, that’s hard to detect and resist.

Agree. This needs to be understood. It’s changes everything

Then there are 47 million people not paying into social security.
And Trump saying no restrictions on AI for 10 years.

Social Security started paying out benifts just months after payroll taxes were collected.
In a few years, retirees will have their benifts cut by 23% if congress does act.
The rich don't pay social security payroll taxes on the above over $122,000. Raise that to $200,000 to keep social security solvent. Many people don't have a pension. 60% of households don't have $500savings

you don't understand.

the villainaire class already stated openly, that if robots and ai doing the work for them they won't need most of the people anymore.

capitalism and infinite growth were just necessary to build up enough wealth to speed up development of robotic slaves.

in the next stage of villainaireism they will get rid of most of us, because that is the most easy way to solve mankinds biggest problems like water-, food- and ressourceshortages. and it will solve climate change.

If Amazon replaces their human workforce with robots and AI, and similar companies do the same, who is buying from Amazon and how much are they spending? Wage costs go to zero, but energy and repair costs probably go up, so it’s not a 100% gain— will lower wage costs be offset by lower sales? What’s the model for these companies earning $100 trillion in profits?! Billionaires are living like kings in a modern, technological society, but seem determined to be feudal kings instead.

That feudal king comparison hits home—we’re basically watching the 1800s repeat itself with better software. The core issue is that our current tax code is built on human labor, not silicon output. If the workforce disappears, the whole mechanism for funding social safety nets breaks.

One possibility. They tax the work the AI is doing that replaced the work humans were doing otherwise the government will lose so much tax revenue the system will collapse. It still doesn't solve the issue of mass job displacement to the work force by AI. I haven't heard any law makers or companies come up with solutions for the massive job displacement. No ethics involved to save people's livelihood just greed. I think at some point we will just eat the rich due to their corruption.

Add a tax element to AI tokens? The more intensive the AI work, the more tax paid

If automation of jobs would cause a massive reduction in tax revenue, why aren't governments making more of a fuss about it?
Two possibilities.
1. They are moving too slowly to keep up with the shift to automation/AI. Quite plausible because governments are slow monolithic organisations.
2. They don't believe the job market will collapse to this extent.
But that leads to.
2a. Because they don't believe the AI hype. Or...
2b. They are wrong.

As someone who works in tech, and whose main job is 'horizon scanning' for threats, I am in the overhyped camp.

AI is in a bubble of expansion right now, and all hype bubbles eventually pop.
So many of the AI companies have shown they have no path to profitability. They are astroturfing the future in the hope that they can turn a profit once they hold all the ground.
We saw it with the ".Com" bubble. Some companies captured the relevant spaces to be profitable but a lot failed spectacularly.

We already live in an economy of abundance. AI and automation will only increase that. It’s how we distribute the wealth that is important. The current K shaped economy has a large percentage of the population living in scarcity. Wealth inequality can been the demise of a civilization. And I’m on the upper arm of “the K”, so don’t think I’m asking for a handout. I’m asking for the playing field to be leveled!

Firstly i need to say that I'm really sorry for being the one to spoil 333 likes and 33 comments.

Governments who are falling over themselves to be in the AI clique need to look at this thread. More and more manufacturing jobs have been going to automation for decades, but AI will be an explosion and it won't j7st be manufacturing jobs this time, it will be service industry jobs too. No workers = no tax revenue.

I think the creators are looking a little deeper, whilst still very superficially.

Robots don’t need:-

Paying wages
Sick pay
Holiday pay
Holiday days
Sick days
Breaks
Pensions
Car parking spaces
Training
Contracts of employment

The savings are huge, but will only happen once.

robots don’t buy stuff, so once the bubble has burst, they’ll be stockpiles of unwanted products that no one can afford.

The banks win either way. Competition within companies who use automation and AI will mean the cost of products will come down. Your new home was built by robots and so the price of the home is a lot cheaper. Only problem is that the federal reserve can raise interest rates, making what you borrow money as a mortgage makes the home more expensive. It’s a vicious and cruel cycle that will never end.

Taxing AI like labor misses the point.
The value doesn’t disappear, it shifts to profits.
If you only tax the “machine,” companies will just restructure around it.
The real question is how you tax the value created, not who or what creates it.
And mass unemployment isn’t inevitable.
The risk is failing to redistribute the gains, not the technology itself.

If foreign beings do visit this planet, they will see the results of greed; inbreeding; and depravity.

The future that these tech bros want will not make their offspring supreme: it will make them cannabilistic parasites that eat this planet free of humans by devouring every trace of those people's DNA.
Damn shame we won't see that future.

Which is why we need "negative" income tax or "minimum living wage" schemes, paid for by the business rates and income tax-on-profits of large corporations.
Plus intensive retraining for "middle class" knowledge workers to exploit the new tools.
Perhaps we could devote this displaced effort into repairing our damage to the environment?

If governments switch the balance to corporation tax (or the equivalent outside the UK) and away from income tax it could work, but it would need to be done on an international scale so that companies don't just relocate to like tax locations. And sort out the issues with tax havens. It's not simple.

We need law and new world goverment for this AI era. What i mean new world goverment is: current goverment system is obsolete and should replace with new system with new justice to human. But i agree if human birth should be controlled so resource should be saved instead wasted to unproductive human

That why there killing us !!!

Get rid I’d Sara centre and Ai robots remove Israel and trump end of - this will be the start of pi wave then build laws and order that work silly for the people not for the manager ( gov ) remove anyone in the ring of pedos the ring of MAGA and Nazi behaviour !

the notion that we're about to automate 47 million jobs is laughable and purely fiction. Have you ever gone into a business full of boomers and tried to automate any 1 thing? Business data is rotten to its core. Automation assumes you have data to leverage. This is not the case.

Yes Congress needs to tax companies for every job replaced. But that would be difficult to assess. So what they will end up doing is rewarding companies with a tax break that hire a human being. But first, they really must tax the wealthy at least up to 28%

A sick robot would be fixed at company’s cost. No healthcare required.
Robots dont need roads. Or house. They just live on site.
They dont need Social Security. They just get recycled.
With less things to look after the govt dont need the lost tax money.

This entire economy is going to grind to a halt.

The people saying they have to stop communism are removing most of the population from engaging in capitalism.

It's gonna become barter & trade. Either that, or forced labor on us.

I don’t think the billionaires care if things collapse… they know they are ushering in an apocalypse of unemployment and not only do they not care, they want societal collapse to happen faster so they can pick our bones clean.

Then there’ll be no human bones to pick. They will have no ‘customers’. Robots will charge other robots for services rendered.

One thought I have is until robots fix themselves, who is going to maintain the robots?? They need part maintenance and replacement, software updates, etc.
With the dumbing down of Americans, is this another outsourcing of jobs?

Maintenance is the hidden tax that nobody accounts for in the tech bros pitch. We’re trading a skilled workforce for a dependency on proprietary parts and software updates that we don’t even own. It’s not just job loss, it’s a massive transfer of agency from the person doing the work to the corporation owning the code. Think we'll actually have the labor force left to even fix these things, or are we just outsourcing the repair work to a different set of machines?

Ive been saying this for months and my comments received very little traction. It's like people don't realize how this loss in tax revenue will effect the entire government and the programs we rely on.

Well someone is thinking today. The high IQ folks are legends in their own minds but dont have common sense enough to look at the long term implications of this AI replacement theory.

This is exactly the reason I do not use automated checkouts and ordering kiosks. They pay zero towards the infrastructure we need but make profits for the billionaires.

Maybe robots should be paid wages? Otherwise it's slavery. That being said; people that are paid wages live like slaves also... So really, it's not about the money.

Wow, I never heard anyone put it that way. Very interesting

Of course, if robots are paid wages, then they can pay tax. The alternative of course is to save huge amounts of beaurocacy - making many thousands redundant 😓 - and just not use money. And the robots do it all on a voluntary basis, then everyone's happy and no chance of the inevitable 'robot revolt'.

Has anyone thought what people are going to do? If we lose millions and millions of jobs, how will we survive? Is everyone just going to be homeless, jobless?

Consumers are required to consume in a market economy. No job, no money, no consumption. Looks like they’ll have to create a guaranteed basic income

Part of the one world order plan,then they have complete control, you act out no payday ,no food, no home ,NOTHING, as they will have 100^ capability to control every aspect of your life 😉

People with no income can’t buy food to remain alive so there will be billions fewer people to govern so governments can shrink significantly.

Owned by billionaires who, with all their various deductions and tax dodges, pay an effective income tax tax rate of something like 23%.

The upshot will be that all the unemployed people will not be able to afford whatever the robots make or the services they provide.

Similarly, EVs don’t pay the fuel tax so a separate fee or tax is fair. Some propose a flat amount and others a per mile amount.

How do corporate profits skyrocket when hardly any works for money to buy products?
The take your jobs bs is a marketing campaign

You are hitting the nail on the head. When companies replace payroll with servers, that revenue shift doesn't automatically move into public infrastructure—it just concentrates at the top. The robot tax is one path, but have you looked into what data dividends would actually look like for the average person?

No jobs
No tax
No economy
It's not being talked about because the adults in the room know that "Ai will take your job" bs is marketing not reality

Looks like citizens are not needed anymore since you treat the country as a place to monetize and extract wealth from.

AI and Robots needs to be taxed then or companies are taxed more an we do UBI for the masses that will be unemployed

The solution is simple and it’s right in front of your face: We start collecting royalties instead of taxes.

They have enough money- the goal is to eliminate a large portion of the population. That’s what’s happening

Excellent points, the same goes with removing women from the workforce. Who is going to replace those taxes?

That's the silent killer in the AI narrative. If we replace human wages with automated output, the whole social contract snaps. We've built an entire civilization on payroll taxes, and that foundation is cracking. Do you think a robot tax would actually work, or would the tech giants just find another loophole?

I think they really don't know what they are doing, and I hope it hits them hard.