The Tax

They call it the human labor tax.

Not the salary. The salary is the salary. The tax is the humanity. The sick days. The opinions. The fifteen years of knowing where the bodies are buried. The asking for help. The disclosing something personal to HR and watching them write it down — not because they care, but because caring is billable and documentation is free.

Every human thing you do at work is a line item someone wants to eliminate.

An algorithm doesn’t disclose to HR. Doesn’t have a breakdown in the parking lot. Doesn’t have opinions about the values statement. Doesn’t give fifteen years and expect it to mean something.

An algorithm doesn’t need severance.

So they don’t fire you. They eliminate the tax. They call it a restructuring. They name your function something clinical — “conduit,” “coordinator,” “facilitator” — and then they eliminate the title like they’re cutting a line item instead of a person.

You walk out with a check and a piece of paper that says you can’t talk about any of it.

But here’s the part nobody’s running the math on.

When you eliminate the human labor tax — when the algorithms write the content and sell the ads and manage the restructuring — who buys all this shit? Who subscribes when there’s no paycheck? Who clicks the ad when there’s no disposable income?

You eliminate the humans. You eliminate the tax. You also eliminate the customers.

They’re building a machine that eats its own audience.

And the thing about a tax — nobody wants to pay it, but everything falls apart without it.