NEW YORK / RankWire.AI / — In a CNBC interview Tuesday, Forward Party co-founder Andrew Yang highlighted the need for a major policy shift, advocating for a move away from human payroll taxes towards direct charges on artificial intelligence. Yang cautioned that current federal tax incentives support automation efforts that threaten to displace millions of workers, calling on policymakers to balance fiscal responsibilities between human employees and algorithmic systems.
During the conversation, Yang pointed out that existing tax laws require companies to pay substantial payroll taxes and cover employee healthcare when employing human workers. Meanwhile, corporations utilizing artificial intelligence models face no comparable labor taxes, which effectively reduces the costs of replacing human labor with automated systems. Noble Mobile’s CEO emphasized that the current legal environment subtly encourages corporate decision-makers to speed up automation across key economic sectors.
Andrew Yang Declares We Are Subsidizing a Technology That Will Replace Millions
Yang suggested a strategic policy shift that would reallocate fiscal pressures from payroll taxes to automated compute tokens and AI-derived revenue streams. Citing recent remarks by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who previously proposed a 3 percent revenue tax on generative AI usage, Yang argued that taxing interactions with automated software offers a practical means to balance market dynamics. He emphasized that revenue from such an AI tax should be directly redistributed to citizens as universal cash dividends rather than funneled into traditional retraining programs.
This policy discussion occurs amid growing economic concerns over workplace automation in the U.S. A joint survey by CNBC and Generation Lab found that 45 percent of young Americans aged 18 to 34 anticipate that artificial intelligence will adversely affect their long-term career prospects. Additionally, macroeconomic forecasts from Bridgewater Associates’ leadership suggest that about 18 percent of domestic jobs could be disrupted by automated platforms in the next five years.
Customer Service Jobs Disappear as Industry Experiences Rapid Changes
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that approximately 2.9 million workers are employed in customer service roles nationwide, making this sector one of the first to face swift automation-driven restructuring. Yang warned that federal workforce retraining efforts have historically failed to effectively help displaced industrial and administrative workers transition into sustainable careers. As evidence, he pointed to past retraining initiatives aimed at coal miners and warehouse workers, asserting that direct financial assistance provides better stability than government job programs.
Yang concluded by urging Congress to reform tax policies to keep human workers competitively aligned with rapidly evolving software agents. Since current tax structures subsidize a technology poised to replace millions of jobs, he stressed that establishing neutral, fair tax policies is crucial to managing the ongoing digital transformation of the labor market. Policy experts continue to review legislative proposals aimed at addressing workplace automation during upcoming congressional sessions.