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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Scott Olson \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has weighed in with a scorching proposal to confront one of the most existential employment issues of our time: AI automation.<\/p>\n
A long-time advocate for labor rights, Sanders recently released a report<\/a> about the impact AI could have on jobs over the next decade. The worst-case scenario outlined by the paper is startling: that \u201cAI and automation could destroy nearly 100 million US jobs in a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n The core problem, the report found, is that US workers aren\u2019t receiving their fair share of the profits, which have risen drastically in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cSince 1973, there has been an explosion in technology and a massive increase in worker productivity,\u201d it reads. \u201cBut the resulting economic gains have gone almost exclusively to those at the top. While productivity has risen by 150 percent and corporate profits have increased more than 370 percent, real wages have gone down for the average American worker by nearly $30 a week.\u201d<\/p>\n Here, Sanders is pointing to an economic issue known as the productivity-wage gap<\/a>. Decades before AI was even a glimmer in Elon Musk\u2019s eye, corporations began suppressing worker\u2019s pay, even as productivity grew<\/a>, allowing them to pocket the difference. As of 2024, the gulf between worker productivity and wages has become so wide that a fair minimum wage is calculated to be<\/a> around $25 an hour \u2014 over three times the current federal minimum of $7.25.<\/p>\n AI and automation, Sanders is worried, has the potential to make that much worse. Corporate execs aren\u2019t exactly shy about it, either, as they brag about<\/a> workers whose jobs they get to automate and wield AI like a cudgel<\/a> to push fewer workers to toil harder for less.<\/p>\n Either way, Sanders has a solution: a \u201crobot tax,\u201d levied against large corporations to distribute to workers whose lives are upended by technological automation. As the report describes it, this would function as a \u201cdirect excise tax\u201d on the tech itself, ensuring the \u201cwealth created by these technologies are redistributed back to the workers impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, it\u2019s a variation on the idea of a universal basic income (UBI), meted out to those directly affected by automation.<\/p>\n \u201cIf workers are going to be replaced by robots, as will be the case in many industries, we\u2019re going to need to adapt tax and regulatory policies to assure that the change does not simply become an excuse for race-to-the-bottom profiteering by multinational corporations,\u201d Sanders wrote in his 2023 book \u201cIt\u2019s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism,\u201d per Business Insider.<\/p>\n Whether or not the disaster scenario comes to pass remains to be seen. There\u2019s plenty of reason to be skeptical \u2014 for example, the fact that AI is failing to generate revenue at 95 percent of the firms<\/a> that roll it out.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Sanders\u2019 proposal might not go far enough; as BI notes, even Bill Gates supports<\/a> the idea \u2014 a cautionary flag that Sanders\u2019 view might be more mainstream than you\u2019d think.<\/p>\n As some commentators argue<\/a>, without a vastly expanded social safety net, a UBI can only ever be a band-aid fix leading to a new type of state-backed poverty<\/a>. For UBI to be truly universal, it must be accompanied by worker protections like rent freezes and price controls, to say nothing of democratic control of the workplace<\/a> in the first place.<\/p>\n