Chapter 1: 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?
Chapter 2: 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?
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Chapter 3: What are the arguments against taxing AI companies?
So my worry is, is this one step in that direction or are we not even, we're centuries away from that. AI is going to create about as many jobs as it destroys. Is this just like the horse to the car or is this some fundamental sci-fi change where nobody ever has to work again and enlarged language models is the first piece?
You know, when you're old like me, you relive every day, every day. And I remember when the VCR was going to kill movies. I remember when, I don't know, Sirius Radio was going to kill whatever the other radio is called.
The one we're on now.
And you know what? I know, let's be honest, David, you're a little bit to the left of me.
Sure.
But let me tell you, the burden on this, it's still going to fall on consumers and workers anyway, right? You can tax AI development all you want. What are you going to do? In some sense, you can reduce that R&D investment that Moish is talking about. You'll slow down technological progress. You'll reduce the efficiency gains. There goes economic growth, higher prices, lower wages.
And you've just created the problem you tried to eliminate.
Andrew Yang, the guy we're talking about, he's basically saying tax workers less, like lower income tax and tax AI companies, bots doing jobs. So that puts more money in the consumer's pocket.
He wanted to create the tax revenue to try and put a UBI in place. That in itself is a ridiculous concept, right? Let's say that you want to give the average person $1,000 a month. That's not even going to cover rent. And I don't care whether this is a U.S. listener or a Canadian listener. $1,000 is not going to fix your problems. So $1,000 a month.
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Chapter 4: How do economists view the impact of AI on job markets?
I'm not convinced that based on what I'm seeing out of certain governments, they're not running their governments using AI and the models aren't great. I'll say that. Messy money matters. People on the wild, wild internet have posted dilemmas asking the internet if they are the jerk when it comes to certain money matters.
And we are going to discuss them here with two economics professors, one at Toronto Metropolitan University, Eric Cam. Eric, welcome in. Thank you, David. And the other Moshe Lander at Concordia University. Moshe, welcome to the show. Hello. All right, listen up, you two. Here is a post from a woman online. Over Christmas, my fiance's mom gave us each $250 airline gift card gifts.
It's a great gift, except it came with one condition. We had to use it for a family trip to Missouri. Not exactly my dream destination, I figured, but fine, family time. Then the mother-in-law changed the plan. Now we got to use the cards to go to Florida, to go to Disney World with the family. I hate this idea. I'm a 35-year-old corporate woman, no kids, and Disney is my personal nightmare.
It's expensive. It's crowded. And the family already had a terrible trip there before. My sister-in-law is a huge Disney adult. She gets super childish there. I felt miserable and completely out of place last time. I don't want to repeat the experience. Am I the a-hole if I turn down this gift card to fund this trip entirely? Eric, what do you think?
No, I think that that's the only that's the play here. You've got to turn down the gift card. And I'm going to tell you why. Because you use the term gift. Gifts are unconditional. Gift is here you go. Happy birthday.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of implementing a tax on AI?
Happy anniversary. Happy whatever day. Go do whatever you'd like with this gift. It doesn't have terms and conditions. It doesn't have small print at the bottom. This has large print at the top. This is a gift. But you're going to do what I say when I say if you'd like to indulge and cash in the gift. I would tell the mother-in-law, thank you very much, but no thank you, and go about your day.
This is absolutely ridiculous. You're being held hostage in the guise of a vacation. That's baloney.
It's not even a gift. How much is a trip to Disney with your partner? That's thousands of dollars. So it's basically saying you have to spend thousands of dollars on this trip you don't want to go on, but we'll subsidize $250 of it. Moshe, where do you land in?
That's every destination wedding. They make you spend money to come celebrate with them. But look, I once heard about grandparents, that the best thing about grandparents is that they should open their wallet and shut their mouth. I think it's the same sort of idea when it applies to a gift, right?
I find that the whole idea of a gift card to be extremely insulting, but not for the reason that you might think. Money is universal. You give me cash, I can go spend it wherever I want. You give me a gift card, forget the conditions that I have to go to Florida or whatever, I can only spend that gift card with that company.
So it's not a sign of how much you love me, it's a sign of how much you dislike me, that you're constraining my ability. Give me cash, period. Even if you want to make conditional cash, give me cash. So I actually object to this gift, not on the grounds that it comes with conditions. It's the fact that it's a gift card itself is the condition that would make me see red.
Even if I want to go to Florida, why do I have to go that airline or that particular route that they're demanding? That's just massively insulting.
Gift cards are just basically bad cash. I didn't have the chutzpah to do this, but for my first wedding, I'm now divorced, I really wanted to put on the wedding invitation. We are registered at JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Let me tell you, David, that is not nearly as insulting as I know one woman, I won't mention her name, but I hope she's listening because I know what she does, is she got a gift card as a birthday gift. And you know what she told the person who gave her the card? She said, I don't really shop at that store. Could I have the cash instead? Yeah. Gift cards make people do stupid things.
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