Odd Lots · Friday, September 11, 2026
Greg Jensen proposed a 'token tax' or 'machine labor tax' as a way to prevent human labor from being disadvantaged compared to machine labor. He argued that taxing machine work would create a more equitable system and generate revenue, potentially incentivizing human employment. Jensen believes this tax is politically viable and can help mitigate the societal disruptions caused by AI adoption.
“One thing that's obvious, right? It's minimal. It's not, I think some of the other things you're talking about, tax and wealth and other things are also part of the solution. But one thing that's obvious is you shouldn't be putting human labor at a disadvantage to machine labor. And it is today. We tax human labor. That's a disincentive.”
“Whatever you tax, you're disincentivizing. You tax tariff. goods, you're disincentivizing importing foreign goods, you tax labor, human labor, and not machine labor. You are disincentivizing one versus the other. Why are we doing that?”
“So A, I think a token tax, a machine labor tax, whatever you want to call it, and we could get into, I think we could get to the mechanics. But you can measure how much work the machine is doing. If a company's hiring as a worker, it should at least pay taxes proportionate to income taxes that humans pay, or else you're prioritizing machine labor over human labor.”