Source: Washington Post
by Adam Michel
“Washington at last seems to have hit upon a revenue idea that both Republicans and Democrats like: taxing artificial intelligence to help the American worker. Too bad it would do the opposite. On the right, President Donald Trump wants AI companies to give ‘something back to the public,’ while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has expressed openness to taxation to make sure AI companies ‘are actually working for the public good.’ On the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wants the public to own half of the biggest AI companies, and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) has called for a tax on AI tokens, the basic data unit processed by large language models. The various tax proposals rely on different mechanisms, but the same story motivates them. It’s a story based on a zero-sum assumption — that gains for capital automatically means losses for labor.” (07/21/26)