To offset negative externalities imposed on displaced workers from rapid automation, taxes on automation might be considered in this scenario.

... the possibility of using taxes on AI consumption to support workforce development initiatives.
... it could potentially be funded through taxes on AI-driven revenues from firms above a certain high level of market capitalization.
... exploring a "low-rate business wealth tax" as a complement to income taxes.

Low: Invest in upskilling through workforce training grants, Reform tax incentives for worker retention and retraining, Close corporate tax loopholes, Accelerate permits and approvals for AI infrastructure
Moderate: Establish trade adjustment assistance for AI displacement (skill training), Implement taxes on compute or token generation
High: Create national sovereign wealth funds with stakes in AI, Adopt or modernize value-added taxes, Implement new revenue structures to account for AI’s growing share of the economy

If AI winds up controlled by, and benefiting only a few, while most people lack agency and access to AI-driven opportunity, we will have failed to deliver on its promise.

Without thoughtful policies, AI could widen inequality by compounding advantages for those already positioned to capture the upside while communities that begin with fewer resources fall further behind, excluded from new tools, new industries, and new opportunities. There is also a risk that the economic gains concentrate within a small number of firms like OpenAI, even as the technology itself becomes more powerful and widely used. Workers using AI might well agree that it’s increasing their productivity without believing they’re seeing the benefits.

Policymakers could rebalance the tax base by increasing reliance on capital-based revenues—such as higher taxes on capital gains at the top, corporate income, or targeted measures on sustained AI-driven returns—and by exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated labor.

Public Wealth Fund, Pathways into human-centered work (skills training),

the real populist backlash will start if and when the unemployment rate rises by at least 2 percentage points, and is accompanied by a clear narrative that AI is to blame.

credible commitment—building institutions in calmer moments that bind political action in turbulent ones—is a central problem of political economy

crisis-era policy is shaped by what’s available in the air rather than by what’s best, and right now the ideas most readily at hand are the wrong ones: data center moratoria, blunt sectoral bans on deployment, punitive taxation of compute regardless of use, and structural breakups designed for symbolic rather than functional purposes