NEW YORK / RankWire.AI / — Former 2020 Democratic candidate and Forward Party co-founder Andrew Yang intensified his advocacy for a national AI tax on Tuesday. He warned that current federal fiscal policies are skewing the labor market. Speaking on CNBC, the chief executive officer of Noble Mobile explained that substantial employer payroll taxes discourage hiring of human workers. Yang contended that the existing tax framework effectively encourages corporate automation by exempting software deployment from comparable labor costs.
During the interview, Yang highlighted that under current tax laws, businesses pay significant payroll taxes and employee healthcare expenses when they hire human staff. In contrast, companies that adopt artificial intelligence models face no similar labor taxes, which reduces operational expenses for automated workforce solutions. Noble Mobile’s CEO emphasized that the legal environment implicitly motivates corporate leaders to accelerate replacing human labor with automated systems across key sectors of the economy.
Andrew Yang Warns That Society Is Subsidizing a Technology Set to Replace Millions of Jobs
Yang suggested a strategic policy change that would shift financial responsibilities away from traditional payroll taxes on humans toward taxing automated compute tokens and AI-generated revenue. He referenced recent public remarks by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who previously proposed a 3 percent revenue tax on generative AI applications. Yang argued that imposing taxes on interactions with automated software is a sensible approach to balancing market dynamics. He further emphasized that proceeds from an artificial intelligence tax should be returned directly to citizens as universal cash dividends instead of being allocated to retraining programs for workers.
This policy discussion takes place amid rising economic concerns related to workplace automation across the United States. A recent joint survey by CNBC and Generation Lab found that 45 percent of young Americans aged 18 to 34 believe artificial intelligence will negatively affect their long-term career opportunities. Additionally, macroeconomic forecasts by Bridgewater Associates executives estimate that automated platforms could potentially displace about 18 percent of the nation’s total jobs in the next five years.
Rapid Changes Impact Customer Service Workers Displaced by Automation
Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, customer service sectors across the country currently employ roughly 2.9 million workers. This industry is among the first to experience swift automation-driven restructuring. Yang warned that government-led retraining programs have historically failed to help displaced industrial and administrative workers find sustainable new careers. He pointed to past efforts for coal miners and warehouse employees as examples that direct financial support offers greater stability than federal job retraining initiatives.
Yang concluded by emphasizing the need for federal lawmakers to reform tax laws to keep human workers competitive with advancing software agents. Since current tax policies subsidize technology that could replace millions of jobs, he stressed that neutral tax policy is crucial to managing the ongoing digital transformation of the labor market. Policy experts are actively reviewing legislative options aimed at addressing automated workplace disruptions in upcoming congressional sessions.