We argue that the US tax system is biased against labor and in favor of capital and has become more so in recent years. As a consequence, it has promoted levels of automation beyond what is socially desirable. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to optimal taxation of capital and labor would raise employment by 4.02 percent and the labor share by 0.78 percentage point and restore the optimal level of automation. If moving to optimal taxes is infeasible, more modest reforms can still increase employment by 1.14–1.96 percent, but in this case it is also beneficial to impose an additional automation tax to reduce the equilibrium level of automation. This is because marginal automated tasks do not bring much productivity gains but displace workers, reducing employment below its socially optimal level. We additionally show that reducing labor taxes or combining lower capital taxes with automation taxes can increase employment much more than the uniform reductions in capital taxes enacted between 2000 and 2018.

我们认为，美国的税收制度偏向于劳动力，而偏向于资本，并且近年来变得更加偏见。结果，它提高了自动化水平，超出了社会期望的水平。从2010年代的美国税制转向资本和劳动力的最佳税收，将使就业人数增加4.02％，劳动份额提高0.78个百分点，并恢复最佳的自动化水平。如果要实行最优税收是不可行的，那么进行更温和的改革仍可以使就业增加1.14％至1.96％，但是在这种情况下，征收额外的自动化税以降低自动化的均衡水平也是有益的。这是因为边际自动化任务不会带来很大的生产率提高，反而会导致工人流离失所，从而将就业率降低到其社会最佳水平以下。