Yus Jacobs

i strongly disagree. imagine: someone is working for $15/hr in a bicycle shop in san jose. they aspire to one day create their own bicycle company, selling custom bikes to customers. but how? today they don't have the labor pool, startup capital, or capabilities. tomorrow, the miracle of technological progress emerges... 2 robots can be purchased for $20k, setup in this person's garage. and used to build bicycles 24/7 on demand, AI is used to create a website and ordering system. and customers place orders online. now, this worker owns and runs his own highly profitable business. an economic miracle. unleashed by technology. a few years ago, i visited a farm in western australia. this guy used to be a field worker, he saved up and bought some large automated farm equipment and today he singlehandedly owns and farms 10k acres. his quality of life and the prosperity of his family ballooned. an economic miracle. unleashed by technology. today, millions of individuals make a living selling goods online, working their own hours, while feeling more fulfilled. if not for ebay, amazon stores, shopify, etsy, these individuals would not have been able to create their own businesses and improve their own living conditions. an economic miracle. unleashed by technology. taxing and burdening the creation of those online stores would have destroyed that opportunity and all those individuals would be worse off. in the same vein, and to directly address your original example, instead of working for a video game company, AI will now let artists create their own video games and run their own studios. they don't need to be employed by someone else's studio or big company. AI gives them all the tools they need. if a studio "replaces artists" with AI, those artists will now be able to compete with the studio, eroding the studio's profits away, while increasing the quality and quantity of video games in the market. consumers win and artists make more money. these economic miracles play out every day in free markets, unburdened by the government's intervention. as soon as the govt creates "taxes on automation", it shackles workers to old jobs. automation IS opportunity. it is leverage for the individual, not just profiteering for the corporation. at this very moment, i believe elected officials who are looking to get re-elected are finding emotional resonance with voters by proclaiming job loss and doom emergent are due to the AI miracle underway. the reason the message of AI doom and billionaire blame is so resonant is because cost of living has exploded in the United States. ironically, i'd strongly argue, the current high cost of living is due, exclusively, to excess government spending. by creating govt programs to give people "access" to food, housing, education, and healthcare, elected officials have inadvertently inflated the cost of food, housing, education, and healthcare. if there is an obligation to buy, the seller (food company, home builder, education institution, and drug company) will be incentivized to charge ever-higher prices. and here we are with record high prices for everything. i would urge you to make your existing government programs more accountable and eliminate those that aren't meeting their core social objectives, before trying to launch new ones. rightsize spending to ensure govt programs are net deflationary, rather than inflationary. this would actually help people in need. and i will tell you one thing that will certainly be deflationary to the cost of living in the US - automation. let's pls not get in the way.