Have you lost your job to AI? Bernie Sanders has a solution that the tech bros won’t like

Technology and automation have greatly improved productivity over the past five decades. This has been a boon for corporate profits but the average American worker has not benefited through their paycheck says Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in a report he published last week.

He warns that artificial intelligence tools are expected to greatly improve worker productivity even more in the coming years as well, but at the same time the technology will decimate nearly 100 million jobs.

In his report, Sanders cited Elon Musk, who said last year that “probably none of us will have a job… If you want a job that’s kind of like a hobby you can do a job. But otherwise, AI and robotics will provide any goods and services you want.”

In a video he released on Wednesday, Sanders states that he is not a “luddite” but that steps need to be taken to protect American workers from the upheaval this latest revolution will cause. One to the measures he wants to enact most likely won’t go down well with those set to benefit the most from AI, a “robot tax.”

Bernie Sanders’ plan to protect US workers from AI

“As AI and automation start producing incredible wealth for their owners and put many workers out of their jobs, we should enact a direct excise tax on these technologies to protect workers and ensure that the wealth created by these technologies are redistributed back to the workers impacted,” proposes Sanders.

Furthermore, he wants to even the playing field by eliminating tax incentives that favor investments by companies in automation over human workers. He cites the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed this summer which will expand tax breaks by more than $360 billion over the next 10 years.

Instead, he states that if these were eliminated, an estimated $1.5 trillion could be raised over ten years, “which could be reinvested in programs to support displaced workers.”

Sanders has surprising company in calls for robot tax

While Sanders may be considered a bit more to the left on the ideological spectrum, he is not alone in his calls for a robot tax. People like Bill Gates and Mark Cuban have also made such proposals notes the American Enterprise Institute.

However, the Washington think tank points out that it is extremely difficult to write up legislation to tax robots and automation. This is because you have to formally define what they are and you need to make the tax be economically efficient.

AEI senior fellow Will Rinehart gave the example of California’s AB 1018, which failed in the legislature, that was designed to put a human touch back into some automated decision systems. “It was so broadly written that even Excel spreadsheets would have triggered regulatory requirements,” he highlighted.

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