白宫希望AI能帮助美国通过增长摆脱债务。这是对里根时代承诺的新演绎——减税能自行抵消成本，爱德华多·波特在《卫报》的一篇分析中如此主张。
The White House hopes AI will help the US grow its way out of debt. That is a new take on the Reagan-era promise that tax cuts pay for themselves, Eduardo Porter argued in an analysis for The Guardian.
“即使AI极大刺激了经济，其对政府财政的影响也将是有限的，”他写道。
“Even if AI supercharged the economy, its impact on the government’s finances would be muted,” he wrote.
美国财政部长斯科特·贝森特正依赖AI来实现年均3%的增长——这一增速在美国本世纪鲜有出现，波特写道。
Growth the US has rarely seen Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is relying on AI to help deliver 3% annual growth, a rate the US has rarely hit this century, Porter wrote.
负责任联邦预算委员会（Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget），一个财政监督机构，已经进行了测算。要到2036年将赤字降至GDP的3%，经济需要年均增长约4.4%。实现预算平衡则需要约7.2%的年增长。
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog, has run the numbers. To cut the deficit to 3% of GDP by 2036, the economy would need to grow about 4.4% a year. Balancing the budget would take about 7.2%.
该委员会自身对AI提振增长的估计远低于此。国会预算办公室预计AI每年仅能增加0.1个百分点的增长。
The group’s own estimates of AI’s boost to growth are far smaller. The Congressional Budget Office expects AI to add about 0.1 percentage points a year.
获胜者不缴纳那么多税：波特认为，AI将把收入从劳动者转移到资本所有者。在美国，资本税率约为劳动税率的一半，因此政府将从同等增长中征收更少税收。
Winners don’t pay as much tax Porter argues that AI would shift income from workers to the owners of capital. In the US, capital is taxed at about half the rate of labour, so the government would collect less from the same growth.
AI热潮也在与政府争夺投资者的资金。科技巨头正大举借款建设数据中心，而美国债务已突破GDP的100%。
The AI boom also competes with the government for investors’ money. Tech giants are borrowing heavily to build data centres, as US debt passed 100% of GDP.
回报问题：大型科技公司也需要AI来实现回报。经济学家杰里德·伯恩斯坦和瑞安·卡明斯估计，最大的云计算公司在未来十年需要额外实现13.1万亿至18.7万亿美元的收入，以证明其支出的合理性。
The payback problem Big Tech also needs AI to pay off. Economists Jared Bernstein and Ryan Cummings estimate the largest cloud firms need $13.1tn to $18.7tn in extra revenue over a decade to justify their spending.
如果这些目标未能实现，波特写道，这可能使美国债务的融资变得更加困难。
If those targets are missed, Porter wrote, it could make the US debt even harder to finance.