August 1, Michael Davis, economics professor at the Cox School of Business, SMU Dallas, for an op-ed analyzing the economic impact of ‘No Tax on Tips’ as proposed by former President Trump. Published in The Hill under the heading The unintended consequences of Trump’s ‘No Tax on Tips’ plan: https://tinyurl.com/mu9dtjm2
No matter what you thought about President Biden’s fitness to serve another term, we’re past that. Now we can focus on what the frontrunner candidates for 2024 actually want to do.
This is, sadly, not always easy.
Policy questions are complicated. It’s hard for regular voters — people with, you know, jobs, bills and maybe kids — to figure out what will be best. And because the candidates want to win, they don’t want to tell people about tradeoffs of their policy pitches. They don’t want you to know that if the government does more of one thing, by necessity it must do less of something else.
So, let me suggest that you consider one small change in the tax code that may be up for grabs.
It’s nothing big and complex like abolishing the income tax in favor of a consumption tax (a terrific idea that will never happen). But it is something Donald Trump floated in detail in his RNC convention acceptance speech last month — and something Vice President Kamala Harris will have to address: “No Tax on Tips.”
The First Amendment problem, however, hinges on how we classify AI communicators: Are they more like cats or corporations? The courts have done little to address free expression rights for AI entities. They have considered two other types of non-human actors: animals and corporations. Judges have consistently ruled that animals do not have the same rights as humans. This was most recently restated in the “monkey selfie” case. The court ruled that the monkey could not make a copyright claim because he was not a person. Similarly, a court rejected a cat owner’s claim that being required to buy a business permit for their feline’s performances violated their rights. Blackie the Cat was trained to say “I love you” when his owners squeezed his paw. The judges were not persuaded by the argument that Blackie the Cat had free expression rights. Unlike cats and monkeys, corporations have been successful in receiving the same rights as humans. The Supreme Court started to expand freedom of expression rights to corporations in the 1970s. Justices did so for one reason – corporations can contribute to public discussion. In First National Bank v. Bellotti, the Court emphasized that the First Amendment was created to protect discussion of government affairs. The Court was more emphatic in Citizens United v. United States in 2010.
The Court emphasized, “Speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content.” The decision also highlights that speakers, human or not, cannot be treated differently based on their nature. So, what is the difference between cats and corporations? The key appears to be the non-human actors’ ability to contribute to discussion. Blackie the Cat could communicate, but only what he was trained to say. Corporations are collections of humans and are capable of contributing important ideas to discussion. We have to decide, legally, if AI communicators are more like cats or corporations. Some bots merely spread information, such as those that automatically retweet messages or spread links. Others gather and create information and place it in original formats that contribute to society. The Every Trump Donor bot, which gathered information about the names, hometowns, occupations, and amounts given and wrote the facts into tweets provided a service to discussion. Similarly, news organizations use bots to cover events, including elections. These entities create original content that compares more with the Supreme Court’s rationales in corporate speech cases. Finally, the cats-or-corporations dichotomy comes into play with the anonymity aspect of the law. California’s law requires bots that engage in election advocacy be labeled. If we classify these bots as being like animals, then this is not problematic.
If they are understood more like the Supreme Court has understood corporations, they should have a right to retain anonymity. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, the Court reinforced the right of political communicators to remain anonymous. “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the Court. “Political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.” California’s bot law addresses an important societal problem, but fails to do so in a nuanced fashion. At least some AI communicators contribute to political discourse and will find protection within corporate-speech cases – no matter what Blackie the Cat says. Jared Schroeder is an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Methodist University, where he specializes in First Amendment law.