Trillionaires and Layoffs? An Approach to Redistribute Companies’ AI-Related Wealth
by Melissa Carleton
In today’s AI-driven labor market, job seekers often take months to find a role. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is predicted to become the world's first trillionaire.
The rapid increase in technological change has led to extreme wealth polarization. Given the stark contrast in outcomes between the ultra-wealthy who control AI and the general public, it seems natural to redistribute AI-related economic gains.
In my last two articles (Jan-22, Jan-08), I discussed Universal Basic Income as a potential solution. I argued that a UBI could provide a promising source of security for individuals if implemented carefully. I highlighted that a UBI should not be used as a tool to concentrate power among those who architect its rules. Instead, it should provide a safety net, helping those who are bouncing back after a layoff or other disruption.
However, to achieve widespread economic security, we must consider approaches beyond a UBI. Doing so will help society avoid over-dependency on those in power providing the UBI.
While I ultimately recommend a hybrid approach where citizens receive some universal basic income and some income from other sources, this article delves further into one strategy: redistributing government tax revenue from AI companies to citizens.
AI and Wealth Disparities
At the highest end of the wealth distribution, Elon Musk's estimated net worth in 2026 is $786 billion. According to Business Insider, the total net worth of the top 10 billionaires at the end of 2015 was a combined $559 billion. In 2026, the combined net worth of the top five entrepreneurs is more than double that of the top 10 entrepreneurs from 2016. These statistics present a dramatic illustration of just how wealthy the ultra-rich have become.
What separates high earners from others? Their proximity to technological change plays a key role. At the slightly less extreme end, companies like Meta are paying AI researchers packages of a few million dollars annually. These asymmetric gains seem drastically unfair in a world where the recent college graduate unemployment rate is now nearly 10%.
Individuals in the bottom 50% of the global wealth distribution only own 2% of global wealth. In the U.S., the bottom 50% own about 2.5% of national wealth, while the share of wealth owned by the top 0.1% jumped to a record 13.8% according to a 2024 analysis by The Federal Reserve.
Another trend that highlights stark inequality in an AI age is the disconnect between GDP growth and labor market opportunity. In an illuminating report, Gad Levanon of the Burning Glass Institute highlights that in 2025, GDP growth was high (its annualized growth rate reached 4.4% in the third quarter of 2025) while growth in employment was essentially flat.
Levanon notes that before 2022, employment growth closely tracked that of GDP. He mentions that gains in GDP are no longer translating to new jobs, particularly for college graduates looking for entry-level roles.
As I've highlighted in previous articles, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates jumped to over 9% in December 2025. In an article with Kent Bhupathi in September 2025, we warned of the consequences of recent college graduate unemployment, which at the time was 5.8%. These consequences include lower lifetime earnings and economic mobility for this group.
While recent college graduates represent the canary in the coal mine, people of all ages searching for a job today are facing similar consequences. According to a recent Financial Times article, it now takes the average job seeker 11 weeks to find a new job, its highest since 2021. From personal experience, I've seen talented peers take months to even a year to find a new role: a trend I’ve never observed in years past.
Labor market opportunity builds wealth, and AI is a contributing factor to the economic pressure cooker job seekers face. Accordingly, we should ask how to redistribute economic growth from AI to benefit those in need. I now turn to discussing a potential policy that aims to accomplish this goal.
Tax Revenue from AI Companies to a Pooled Public Fund
One way to redistribute AI-related gains is to build a fund from government tax revenue generated from AI where citizens own shares.
An existing example of a pooled public fund is the Alaska Permanent Fund. The fund was created after oil was discovered in the state. Citizens voted to establish it to gain a share in related profits from the state’s oil reserves. It has since grown to over $86 billion in 40 years, as of December 2025.
To receive the annual amount from the fund, individuals must have lived in Alaska for a full calendar year. According to Alaska’s Department of Revenue, citizens received $1,702 from the fund in 2024. While this amount does not substitute for a full-time salary, it’s enough to cover emergency expenses such as car repairs, providing some relief to individuals in need.
An effective AI pooled public fund would share similar features. It would remain relatively stable, and no individual would command a disproportionate share. Since it would be diversified and not over-invested in one profitable AI company, individuals would not receive outside gains from this source alone. They could still freely invest in high-risk-high-reward stocks separately from this pooled public fund, if they desired.
There is a key difference between an AI pooled fund and the Alaska Permanent Fund. In the case of the Alaska Permanent Fund, the oil reserves are owned by the state. When private companies extract from Alaska’s oil reserves, they pay royalties to the state. A portion of these royalties is redistributed to Alaskans as members of the fund.
With AI companies, there is no clear analog of what the government “owns.” Unlike a piece of land, the government does not own companies’ intellectual property or private wealth generated. Any measure for the government to exert control over these companies’ profits through legislation or higher taxes could face political opposition and lobbying.
Instead, state and national governments could draw from the tax revenue they already receive from AI company profits. In many countries, this tax revenue represents a growing slice of the pie of government resources.
Globally, AI company profits are surging by the year. A Morgan Stanley report predicts that AI revenue could surpass $1 trillion by 2028. In the U.S., major tech companies such as Alphabet (Google), Apple and Microsoft pay billions of dollars in tax revenue.
These companies' profits and governments’ resulting tax income will most likely further balloon. To ensure broader benefit from AI development, state and national governments could create a pooled AI fund from this tax revenue and redistribute equal amounts to citizens.
It's unclear yet if this amount could substitute for a full-time income. But for families who can’t afford basic necessities, a small payment from an AI public fund could make a difference.
Concluding Thoughts
In this article, I presented a solution for governments to redistribute AI-related tax revenue from companies to individuals. As wealth inequality increases globally, implementing such measures is both ethical and practical, as every consumer counts towards maintaining the health of the economy.
Several implementation details of such a policy must be carefully thought out. For instance, what qualifies as an AI company? Is it a company that directly produces an AI-related product, or is it any company that heavily uses AI or invests in AI stocks? Should policies be governed at the national or state level?
Formulating answers to these questions requires further deliberation and careful mathematical calculations. Nonetheless, asking them is important if we want to get the details right.
Finally, the approach discussed in this article has benefits and drawbacks. It should be considered in conjunction with other policies to redistribute income, such as a UBI, rather than on its own.
But it hacks the problem of redistributing wealth gains from AI without introducing politically precarious tax legislation. Redistributing these gains is both logical and ethical, as technological change only advances humanity when it benefits everyone.
Sources:
Alaska Department of Revenue. “Department of Revenue Announces 2024 Permanent Fund Dividend Amount and Energy Relief.” September 19, 2024. https://dor.alaska.gov/department-of-revenue/news-detail/2024/09/19/department-of-revenue-announces-2024-permanent-fund-dividend-amount-and-energy-relief.
Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. APFC Official Website. https://apfc.org/.
Alvaredo, Facundo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. World Inequality Report 2026: Global Economic Inequity. World Inequality Lab, 2026. https://wir2026.wid.world/insight/global-economic-inequity.
Bureau of Economic Analysis. “Gross Domestic Product, 3rd Quarter 2025 (Updated Estimate): GDP by Industry and Corporate Profits.” U.S. Department of Commerce, 2026. https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2025-updated-estimate-gdp-industry-and-corporate.
Chiu, David. “Top Billionaires’ Net Worth in 2016 Was Less Than Elon Musk’s Fortune in 2026.” People, January 2026. https://people.com/top-billionaires-net-worth-in-2016-less-than-elon-musk-fortune-2026-11888193.
Rogers, Taylor Nicole. “U.S Long-Term Unemployment Hits 4-Year High.” Financial Times, January 2026. https://www.ft.com/content/2c10e866-fc6b-4a14-a35f-38c7907925bf.
Levanon, Gad. “A Productivity Regime Shift in the White-Collar Core.” LinkedIn, January 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-regime-shift-white-collar-core-gad-levanon-ucise/?trackingId=pXQ8L4m4RfyHWd9OnoRfMg%3D%3D.
Morgan Stanley. “Generative AI: Revenue Growth and Profitability Outlook.” Morgan Stanley Insights, 2025. https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/genai-revenue-growth-and-profitability.
Sullivan, Martin. “Which Corporations Pay the Most Federal Income Tax.” Forbes, November 3, 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxnotes/2023/11/03/which-corporations-pay-the-most-federal-income-tax
Tanzi, Alexandre. “Half of American Households Hold 97.5% of the National Wealth.” Bloomberg, March 26, 2025.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-26/half-of-american-households-hold-97-5-of-the-national-wealth?srnd=homepage-americas&sref=U3dOGIDF.