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Taxes on non labor things can be used for income transfers and wage subsidies. It's how welfare states were built after industrialization too, taxing industrial production where big capital owned the means of production producing a lot of surplus value.

Those aren’t taxes. They are levies and duties. Which are then associated with subsidies and grants. And they are political choices not economic necessities.

Using one word for two separate jobs confuses matters. English has many words for taking money off people.

Fuel duty and wealth levies do the political job. Taxes do the economic job of releasing resources for the public good

I see it from a different, but quite related, perspective (maybe unpopular in HN as this comes from a left-wing mindset that seems to be outside the Overton window in many places, and particularly in the US).

If things get automated so much that a company ends up being a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. At that point, whatever the company does has been trivialized so much that the usual advantages of the private sector (competitiveness, etc.) become moot. If it also creates no jobs, there isn't really much to lose for the state (and thus its citizens) from expropiating it and using the profits to give citizens a living wage (be it for working or just a guaranteed wage like an UBI).

And then there's no need to tax the robots, the money goes to the state anyway.

I am really impressed with how you take the generally accepted wisdom of, "the government is less efficient that private industry" and then add if this organisation is so robotically efficient then the logic against governments doesn't apply.

It's an interesting piece in the puzzle of how to make society work when AGI and robots take our jerbs.

The wisdom of, "private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency: Specifically, there must be competing private businesses to lower costs, and the market consumers must not suffer from extreme negative consequences (e.g. death or homelessness) for refusing to participate.

>"private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency

OTOH, depending on the government and the tax rate, the incentive for inefficiency in government itself can overwhelm any existing efficiency or incentive for that kind of thing elsewhere.

Then nobody will bother starting new automated businesses – in your jurisdiction, at least. Just like I didn't start a company in my home country, where any reasonably successful business will be “expropriated” (although the beneficiaries will be some oligarch friends of Putin in this case).

No one will start them if no one can buy the products. You are just being a drain on local resources. Few companies produce no waste, no noise, use no electricity, use no water, make no use of roads... and so on. Your company is simply exploiting the land and resources without bringing value to the folks that live there - and that is the point.

Act like you are part of the community and wider world you live in or don't be in business, in other words.

No one will start them if they are not profitable. [1] So yeah, you can tax those a little bit, but there's some threshold. And starting a business elsewhere is an option for an automated company, so if it's more profitable (or convenient, or reputable) to do it people will do it.

Point in case #1: Delaware. No corporate income tax, favorable court system, and no questions from your business partners have made it the preferred state for US startups nowadays.

Point in case #2: Estonia and its e-Residency program. No corporate income tax, fully digital company registration and management even for foreigners, and absolute minimum of bureaucracy for SMBs (admin time is like 1 hr/year, to fill out an annual report). Not sure why we don't see more companies registered there.

[1]: If you start a business that you know for sure wouldn't bring you profit, you're starting a non-profit :^)

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And of course, in the country you live in, you're also paying income taxes on your salary, and VAT on your purchases. (I'm paying mine all right, in case you're wondering.) I don't like the notion that you must pay taxes to be considered ”bringing value to the community”, but it's not like you as a business owner can avoid taxes completely anyway.

> a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it.

i dont think the logic follows.

Those "few guys" are the people who put up the risk capital. If the risk pans out, and they succeed, only to get their reward expropriated, then why would anyone ever take that risk?

Corporate taxes should be sufficient.

Not my downvote, but,

>Corporate taxes should be sufficient.

As we have seen, these type of taxes on predatory corporations are proven insufficient to curtail the predatory activity.

If this was corrected, then non-predatory corporations and ordinary workers would not need to be taxed at all once a jurisdiction had reached a certain level of prosperity overall.

Do you have more background or sources on where this idea comes from?

It seems like this is more just one particular interpretation of a use of tax rather than it being the "one true purpose" of all taxes. I would be interested to see examples of places where this was explicitly the stated aim of a newly introduced tax. From my distant memories of discussing tax in history at school, generally it was to pay off national debt. I suppose one could argue that the debt existed in connection with the public/private manpower point above. And there are plenty of taxes introduced for other stated means.

https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781802208092/97818...

Chapter 1 goes through the monetary accounting

Chapter 9 goes through the tax process.

> If the robots are making people unemployed, then you don't need to tax any more in the first place. Just hire the people to work for the public good and pay them a living wage.

Where does the money come from to do this? Imagine the extreme where all private work is done by robots. Now only government workers are paying themselves taxes, doing ever less needed work (since robots are now doing so much). And, their taxes have to equal their salary, or the government coffers will soon empty. That doesn’t seem to be a workable solution.

The money comes from spending the money.

It’s a simple geometric series that your average 15 year old can do.

You spend £100, that is taxed at 20%, leaving £80 to spend. That £80 is earned as income which is taxed at 20% leaving £64 to spend, and so on.

Like a stone skipping across a pond.

Robots have owners and maintainers. They eat food and live in houses like you and me.

Their choices are the same - spend or save.