To Tax the Bots or Not
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Broadcasting from the intersection of chaos and more chaos. The Last Show with David Cooper.
It's economics professor versus economics professor. I'm here with Eric Kam and Moshe Lander. Eric works at Toronto Metropolitan University, Moshe at Concordia University, and let's talk this topic. What if the thing taking your job paid taxes instead of you?
What is the concept of taxing AI chatbots?
Like if your job gets replaced by an artificial intelligence, large language model kind of thing, maybe that needs to be taxed. Andrew Yang, entrepreneur and former US presidential candidate says, tax the bots, not the humans. Now that sounds elegant, but what would that even look like in practice? We're about to discuss all of this. Moshe, welcome to the program. Hello. And Eric, it is a joy having you here as well.
It's nice to have somewhere to go on my way to work.
It sounds great in theory, tax the bots, tax the thing that is preventing Gen Z from getting jobs allegedly. And I kind of like the concept. Let's start with the concept. Moshe, how do you feel about taxing AI companies or companies that replace low-level workers with chatbots and such?
I don't like it. I think that it makes for good print, but it doesn't work in practice. Let's take the bot out of the story. Let's say that Eric replaces me at my job. So should Eric be taxed then because he replaced me at my job and he should give me his money to pay for me? On a certain level, that does happen. Employed people pay for unemployed people, but you don't have that direct replacement where the person who's doing a better job has to subsidize the person who was doing a worse job.
Counterpoint, bots aren't people. But Eric, do you want to weigh in?
Oh, I'd like to weigh in because this is one in a million because I think Moish is bang on on this one. First of all, as my friend Moish Lander would say, what are you going to tax? By word? By line? By algorithm? Per worker replaced? I mean, I don't even know where this is going as a theory. Number two, you know, I'm getting a little bit tired of people trying to substitute, let's tax it. for what's really going on, which is in this country, north of the border, there hasn't been basically one job created in the last 11 years. And so we're just looking for alternative forms of revenue in lieu of actually creating some long-term economic growth and giving some stability to the job market. So, you know, there's just no end of people saying, what can we tax next?
But that's never been a solution as long as I've been an economist.
Who are you going to believe? Two economists who teach it at universities who've studied it or some idiot with a microphone with no experience in this? Me. I will say this. I like it in theory because like this labor is being done and aren't we taxing labor and it's making money and this, that and the other. But I actually concede that how the heck would we do this in practice? It would be so messy. Like who do you tax? So from that angle, I kind of agree with you because I don't even know how you would implement it.
Well, if you wanted to tax somebody, then it would be the owner of the capital. That's no different than if somebody at McDonald's gets replaced by a machine, then you tax the machine owner. The who part isn't the problem. It's merely the concept. But, you know, let's think of something slightly different then. A hundred fifty years ago, there was a thriving blacksmith industry in Montreal. All of those horses clip clopping around in the old port needed shoes. And so these blacksmiths were extremely profitable until they saw a car drive over the Champlain Bridge. And at that point, then it was, well, we can either try and tax the bot. Or we can recognize that this is the price of progress. And all of those people that lost their jobs and obliterated the blacksmith industry had jobs within 10 to 20 years in metal bashing.
And at the time, if you had asked those blacksmiths, what does your future look like now that the car is coming? They would have never imagined that. That's the beauty about economic evolution is that there's going to be entire industries that sprout up around this AI industry.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–0:36
2
What is the concept of taxing AI chatbots?
0:36–4:40
3
What are the arguments against taxing AI companies?
4:40–9:02
4
How do economists view the impact of AI on job markets?
9:02–10:32
5
What are the challenges of implementing a tax on AI?
10:32–19:09
Speakers
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