Bill Gates wants to reserve jobs for humans and tax machines

TAG74@@Then there is the fiscal component, the one making the headlines. Current tax law treats an automation system like a printer (an expense that can be deducted) and an employee like a line item for social contributions. In the final analysis, replacing humans with machines amounts to cutting a hidden subsidy. Gates therefore proposes a tax on the use and purchase of AI and robots, the proceeds of which would fund unemployment benefits and training. The secondary objective is stated bluntly: to slow somewhat the rush toward automated work. The man in question acknowledges in passing that economists consider the measure ineffective, and openly accepts that the aim is to preserve jobs rather than uphold market purity.

France has already had this debate, and has carefully buried it

French readers may feel a sense of déjà vu, and they would be right to. In January 2017, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs adopted the report by MEP Mady Delvaux, which considered a robot tax to fund social protection. A month later, the plenary voted on the resolution by 451 votes to 138, after removing its fiscal component. That same year, on the French side, Benoît Hamon tied his universal income proposal to a robot tax during the presidential campaign. Gates has long championed this idea. The test on August 26 gives it a new lease of life, above all: in April, OpenAI published its own framework recommending that companies replacing their employees with automation be taxed. The leading automation vendor proposes to tax it, no less.

On the substance, the French figures offer some reassurance. The report submitted to the government in March 2024 by the Artificial Intelligence Commission estimates that approximately 5 % of jobs in France are directly replaceable by AI. The OECD puts the share of positions highly exposed to automation at around 27%, with exposure and disappearance remaining two very different things. A study co-authored in July 2025 by four economists, including Philippe Aghion (120 million job listings scrutinized), finds a relative decline in hiring in exposed occupations and an increase in total employment among adopting companies.The picture would therefore be contrasting rather than apocalyptic, at least for now.

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Source: Bill Gates