NEW YORK / RankWire.AI / — Andrew Yang, the former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and co-founder of the Forward Party, reiterated his call for a national AI taxation on Tuesday. He warned that current federal fiscal policies are skewing the labor market. Speaking on CNBC, the CEO of Noble Mobile explained that high employer payroll taxes discourage hiring of human workers. Yang argued that the existing tax system essentially subsidizes automation by exempting software deployment costs from comparable labor expenses.
In the interview, Yang emphasized that under present tax laws, companies face significant payroll taxes and healthcare costs when employing human workers. Meanwhile, firms deploying artificial intelligence face no equivalent labor taxes, which lowers the costs associated with replacing human labor with automated solutions. The Noble Mobile CEO pointed out that these legal structures implicitly motivate corporate decision-makers to accelerate automation across key industries.
Andrew Yang: We’re Funding a Technology Set to Displace Millions
Yang proposed a strategic shift in policy that would divert fiscal burdens from traditional payroll taxes toward automated compute tokens and AI-based revenue streams. Citing recent remarks from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who suggested a 3 percent revenue tax on generative AI applications, Yang argued that taxing interactions with automated software offers a practical solution to rebalance market dynamics. He also stressed that revenue from an AI tax should be redistributed directly to citizens as universal cash dividends, rather than allocated to retraining initiatives.
This policy discussion unfolds amid growing economic concerns over workplace automation across the U.S. A joint survey by CNBC and Generation Lab found that 45 percent of young Americans aged 18 to 34 believe artificial intelligence will negatively influence their career prospects in the long run. Additionally, macroeconomic research from Bridgewater Associates predicts that automated systems could impact roughly 18 percent of all U.S. jobs over the next five years.
Customer Service Jobs Facing Rapid Industry Change Due to Automation
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that customer service divisions currently employ approximately 2.9 million workers, making it one of the sectors first to experience swift automation. Yang warned that historically, government-led retraining programs have failed to help displaced workers from industrial and administrative roles find sustainable employment. He pointed to past initiatives targeting coal miners and warehouse workers as evidence that direct financial support tends to be more effective than federal job transition programs.
Yang concluded that reforming tax policies at the federal level is crucial to maintaining the economic competitiveness of human workers amid rapid technological advances. Since current tax frameworks subsidize a technology poised to replace millions of jobs, he stressed the importance of establishing neutral tax policies to successfully navigate the ongoing digital transformation of the U.S. labor market. Legislative experts continue to review potential mechanisms to address the disruptions caused by automation in upcoming congressional debates.