[anothermathbozo]

> A wide range of pro-employment policy incentives can help to slow or reduce job displacement, including: wage insurance policies that compensate people when they have to take a lower-paying job, retention tax incentives to encourage employers not to make layoffs, workforce training grants, or infrastructure to facilitate matching of employers to employees to speed the rate of labor market adaptation. While the particulars of which interventions are best will depend on what kind of labor displacement AI brings, we should readily accept the costs and market inefficiencies that these policies could entail, particularly as they are likely to be offset by AI-driven productivity gains.

People get income from one of three places: capital income, labor income, or the welfare state. If this technology truly unlocks a holy panacea of productivity with a commensurate drop in employment then capital’s share of the national income can and should provide for a wider and deeper welfare state. Nothing new need be invented here. Dario’s long and only somewhat organized list of policy interventions makes appropriate preparedness sound like a manic pulling of any and all levers when a simple theory of distribution will suffice.

[jelling]

This and we already did a dry run of ad-hoc distributions with COVID relief. They had to use the data from tax filings but it did work in terms of getting the money out there.

[SpicyLemonZest]

> If this technology truly unlocks a holy panacea of productivity with a commensurate drop in employment then capital’s share of the national income can and should provide for a wider and deeper welfare state.

This isn't guaranteed in the tax system as it exists today, because reinvestments into further growth are often treated as expenses which cancel out the income for tax purposes.

[anothermathbozo]

You’re conflating firm level taxable income with the national income.

[SpicyLemonZest]

No I'm not? Current American tax policy does not guarantee that any fixed percentage of the national income will be received by the government as revenue. If the advent of powerful AI pushes corporations away from dividends and buybacks towards expansion and research, then tax revenues may flatten or even decrease even as the national income spikes. (Sales taxes are more likely to track aggregate economic activity, but US sales taxes are both not very high and don't flow to the federal government.)