AI and tax reform, a modest proposal
by John MacBreath Watkins Lately, I've been thinking about artificial intelligence ("when you can't get enough of the real thing!") and the replicator economy. In Star Trek, when a crewmember gets peckish, they simply go to the replicator in their chambers and order what they want, and in less time than it takes to heat a cup of coffee in a microwave, they have a nice dinner. But what happens when society can make whatever it needs without human labor? Well, in Star Trek, the answer seems to be that most people work for the government. But what are the tax implications? Here I will introduce a couple of charts. From this websiteI https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government From this website: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=2Xa# As you can see, taxes are more and more paid by people who work for wages -- all of the payroll taxes and a large percentage of the individual income taxes. One discrepancy here is that 'indiv...
