Democrats demand 'robot tax' as AI reportedly threatens to replace 100M US jobs

The government has to keep raking in the money...

Dems want companies to pay a levy for each human position replaced by machines, tech or algorithms.

Was there a tax on lightbulb and power companies when the lightbulb was invented and put all the candlestick makers out of business?

Who will pay all the human calculators? Typewriter manufacturers? Elevator lift operators? The Kodak employees? The Blockbuster Video employees? The phonebooth manufacturers?

Where did the government get its income from with each industry that vanished in the 19th and 20th centuries?

For context here's more about what's coming

.@pmarca to @JTLonsdale: 'Hundreds of Billions' of Robots Coming, U.S. Can Lead Next Industrial Revolution by Building Them

"You've all probably seen, @elonmusk has this @Tesla_Optimus robot that he's building. These humanoid robots, the general-purpose robotics thing, is going… pic.twitter.com/yqbkup13TG

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 1, 2025

I think 100s of billions is high by a few orders of magnitude, but TBF if this pans out it could be more disruptive than the other industry replacements I mentioned above.

Robots don't pay union dues that are then funneled to the Dims

TexAgs91 said:

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Democrats demand 'robot tax' as AI reportedly threatens to replace 100M US jobs

The government has to keep raking in the money...

Dems want companies to pay a levy for each human position replaced by machines, tech or algorithms.

Was there a tax on lightbulb and power companies when the lightbulb was invented and put all the candlestick makers out of business?

Who will pay all the human calculators? Typewriter manufacturers? Elevator lift operators? The Kodak employees? The Blockbuster Video employees? The phonebooth manufacturers?

Where did the government get its income from with each industry that vanished in the 19th and 20th centuries?

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Same elements tried to ruin the Internet early out of the gate. This should be resisted for a while. The whole point is government needs to learn how to have less to spend. And get a better handle on what is absolutely expendable like mucking with social sexual practices of foreign nations.

BQ_90 said:

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Robots don't pay union dues that are then funneled to the Dims

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BOOM!!

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A new Senate report warns that artificial intelligence could displace nearly 100 million U.S. jobs within the next decade

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Last BLS report showed 163 million employed in Aug. 2025.

Called it. Been bringing this up for years.

Only two things can happen here:

1. Unions find enough power to fight off robots thereby dooming those businesses to inefficiency and unable to complete against companies who will use robots.

2. We give into robots, have a robot "head" tax and/or implement UBI.

Book #2. It's happening.

It's crazy how every year the magic fix for "the first time this has ever happened" always involves fixing it with socialism and crippling taxes.

How about no.

No.

Not all robots will be large or man sized. Many will be tiny. Imagine little tiny robots crawling in your walls hunting for roaches, or monitoring your lawn for water needs or pest presence, or getting to those difficult to reach plumbing clogs through the pipes, or flying your food order right to your stadium seats so you don't miss part of the game, or walking your dog, etc etc etc…

Can you imagine how expensive food would be if we implemented an automation tax when the tractor was invented and still made farmers pay for all the hundreds of field workers they aren't employing when they use mechanical plows, planters, harvesters, etc?

MouthBQ98 said:

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Not all robots will be large or man sized. Many will be tiny. Imagine little tiny robots crawling in your walls hunting for roaches, or monitoring your lawn for water needs or pest presence, or getting to those difficult to reach plumbing clogs through the pipes, or flying your food order right to your stadium seats so you don't miss part of the game, or walking your dog, etc etc etc…

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True

I'm so glad the government will define "robot" and "AI" and know with some level of certainty which jobs will be impacted.

Are there any estimates for how many government jobs will be eliminated?

MouthBQ98 said:

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Not all robots will be large or man sized. Many will be tiny. Imagine little tiny robots crawling in your walls hunting for roaches, or monitoring your lawn for water needs or pest presence, or getting to those difficult to reach plumbing clogs through the pipes, or flying your food order right to your stadium seats so you don't miss part of the game, or walking your dog, etc etc etc…

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Does this exist? I would like this to exist.

How is a robot tax morally and economically any different from an H1B visa tax?

If robots and computers start taking jobs at the rate they're worried about it will just cause massive deflation and they can print the problem away without a massive increase in inflation. Don't put in a tax for a problem that doesn't exist yet.

I actually think the apparent intention here is good even if I'm skeptical of the action the Dems want to take. I don't know that their taxation idea would solve the problem. It probably wouldn't, and the government needs spending cuts.

There does need to be some plan in place if we eventually replace humans in most jobs with robots, or there needs to be a reasonable disincentive to doing that.

Whatever happens, we cannot have millions and millions of jobless, hopeless people with no livelihoods and no purpose. It will be a massive economic as well as spiritual problem that will eventually turn into many more problems.

Waffledynamics said:

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I actually think the apparent intention here is good even if I'm skeptical of the action the Dems want to take. I don't know that their taxation idea would solve the problem. It probably wouldn't, and the government needs spending cuts.

There does need to be some plan in place if we eventually replace humans in most jobs with robots, or there needs to be a reasonable disincentive to doing that.

Whatever happens, we cannot have millions and millions of jobless, hopeless people with no livelihoods and no purpose. It will be a massive economic as well as spiritual problem that will eventually turn into many more problems.

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I agree.

However, the solution, as you know, will be UBI. Book it.

I understand that the people displaced by AI will decide not to starve to death and instead many will choose to find other jobs, where they will be taxed just like before. Of course some will become grifters sucking on government benefits, but that won't work for most.

BQ_90 said:

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Robots don't pay union dues that are then funneled to the Dims

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YouBet said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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Not all robots will be large or man sized. Many will be tiny. Imagine little tiny robots crawling in your walls hunting for roaches, or monitoring your lawn for water needs or pest presence, or getting to those difficult to reach plumbing clogs through the pipes, or flying your food order right to your stadium seats so you don't miss part of the game, or walking your dog, etc etc etc…

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Does this exist? I would like this to exist.

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Combat trays work great already. I havent had a roach problem since those were invented.

YouBet said:

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Called it. Been bringing this up for years.

Only two things can happen here:

1. Unions find enough power to fight off robots thereby dooming those businesses to inefficiency and unable to complete against companies who will use robots.

2. We give into robots, have a robot "head" tax and/or implement UBI.

Book #2. It's happening.

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#1 like the longshoreman have already done on the docks.

#2 so like workers comp if robot breaks the cost of repair is covered and they may mot have to work for years until they heal or even the rest of their life.

This seems to overlap the concept of a VAT.

I'm not a fan, but in the current scheme; megacorps vertically integrate their supply chains to avoid taxes that multiple sales would incur. This is a structural advantage against single-competency businesses and a significant contributing factor to the death of small businesses.

Robolabor will similarly amplify the advantages for the largest companies which is already unhealthily unbalanced toward size.

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Whatever happens, we cannot have millions and millions of jobless, hopeless people with no livelihoods and no purpose. It will be a massive economic as well as spiritual problem that will eventually turn into many more problems.

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I'm not so sure this is accurate. Our current labor force participation rate is about 62%. About 7.4 million working-age adults are considered unemployed. Also, there are about 74 million people who receive Social Security benefits, and as many as 50 million of those are 'retired' and not employed.

We already have millions of jobless, hopeless people with no livelihood or purpose. Our entitlement programs, exemplified by the COVID shutdowns, indicate that people will be just fine as long as the checks don't bounce and cover enough of our bills.

BQ_90 said:

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Robots don't pay union dues that are then funneled to the Dims

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Not yet.

Ai and machines are the future. I'm very conservative and hate the reality that we're marching towards. UBI or some form of subsidized living is the only viable path I see.

You will leave a large majority of blue collar workers and a decent percentage of white collar workers without any real way to engage in the economy. If you leave it up to those with money, the wealth gap will increase further. That's not sustainable in my opinion.

Democrats want to bring in millions of illegals which would be a drain on our economy in order to produce goods and services.

Instead of doing that, millions of robots would produce goods and services without being a drain on our economy, or at least they would be able to offset their own drain.... No robotax needed.

Botax injections

So to summarize, instead of leaning into this inevitable change in manufacturing to become the world leader, democrats want to throw up roadblocks to help make sure we fall behind in yet another industry.

A tax like this is perhaps the most destructive way possible to solve this impending problem.

An imperfect, but better solution will be UBI, set to a level that keeps you alive, but where you live a poverty lifestyle without working, to keep workforce participation up and wages down.

And assuming UBI is properly limited to citizens, it largely eliminates the illegal immigration draw, as one would need to be a high earner to survive without it.

We would see some combination of inflation and wage reductions, so labor would become more competitive relative to automation, and the social unrest of mass unemployment is avoided.

Obviously paying for it is a challenge.

And as a libertarian, I'd like to see neither option be taken unless absolutely necessary. But I'm afraid something will be necessary to buffer the shock coming to the system.

AtomicActuator said:

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A tax like this is perhaps the most destructive way possible to solve this impending problem.

An imperfect, but better solution will be UBI, set to a level that keeps you alive, but where you live a poverty lifestyle without working, to keep workforce participation up and wages down.

And assuming UBI is properly limited to citizens, it largely eliminates the illegal immigration draw, as one would need to be a high earner to survive without it.

We would see some combination of inflation and wage reductions, so labor would become more competitive relative to automation, and the social unrest of mass unemployment is avoided.

Obviously paying for it is a challenge.

And as a libertarian, I'd like to see neither option be taken unless absolutely necessary. But I'm afraid something will be necessary to buffer the shock coming to the system.

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UBI will be paid for with the robot tax. That will be the proposal, anyway. It won't really work well, but then very little of what the government actually tries to do works well.

tysker said:

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How is a robot tax morally and economically any different from an H1B visa tax?

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Do they have slushie robots?

This is a bunch of pie in the sky BS.

1) Where's the money come from to build all these robots?

2) Who's going fix them when they break? Another robot?

Lol, come on folks. There's never going to be any sort of highly automated manufacturing utopia. Don't be dumb, robots are EXPENSIVE. Human labor will always be cheaper, way way cheaper.

UBI is just another way to remove people from the workforce and drive up labor costs, which eventually brings people back into the workforce. That has to be the stupidest idea of all.

No clanker's gonna terk my jerb!!!

Yeah, the "robot" angle is kinda silly. The reality though is AI automation is coming for white collar knowledge workers and call center type workers first.

Factory automation is old school at this point.

In any case, we're likely heading toward an economic shock of some kind.