Former presidential candidate and political commentator Andrew Yang is calling for a fundamental shift in how the U.S. government approaches taxation, arguing that labor should no longer be taxed and that artificial intelligence should be taxed in its place.
Yang, founder and CEO of Forward Party and author of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks,” made the case during a recent appearance on CNBC, fresh off an AI conference on the West Coast that left him shaken about the pace of technological change.
“You tend to tax things that you want to discourage, that you want less of,” Yang said. “And we’re going to be in a position where we want to shore up labor in every quarter, in every organization and environment. We should actually try to stop taxing labor.”
Yang added that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been openly calling for AI companies to be taxed, a stance Yang found remarkable. “Since when does the CEO of a major company raise his hand and say, ‘Hey, tax me,’ because he sees the writing on the wall and he knows that there’s this massive backlash coming their way.”
The proposal comes as Yang warned that AI-driven job displacement is accelerating faster than most people realize. He cited Amodei’s projection that up to 50% of entry-level white collar jobs could be automated away within the next several years. Yang said he believes that timeline is now even shorter.
“After this AI conference, it’s in the next 12 months,” Yang said. “The whole industry right now is bracing for impact.”
Yang pointed to several alarming data points. Employment among recent computer science graduates has dropped sharply, reversing the old advice to “learn to code.” The unemployment rate among college graduates now equals or exceeds that of non-college graduates for the first time in history. Over 2 million Americans working at call centers face near-certain displacement. And Yang warned that if autonomous vehicles eliminate truck driving, the consequences could be severe, given that it is the number one job in 28 states, held largely by middle-aged men, many of them military veterans.
“There is zero chance that this transition is not going to be rough for millions of people,” Yang said, describing the disruption as “rough with a capital R.”
At the AI conference, Yang said the divergence in how people are responding to AI was stark. “Some of them are not sleeping and just sitting there and becoming super powered on these tools,” he said. “And then the other people are moving to the woods. Literally, that’s the reaction from the people closest to this.”
As for the debate over taxing AI companies, Yang acknowledged that many tech firms will push back, citing competition with China as a reason to hold off. But Yang argued that moment has already passed. “Escape velocity has been achieved,” he said. “These models are now going to be able to improve on their own.”
