BlockBeats News, June 17th. Guolian Minsheng Securities released a research report pointing out that despite the market's hope for AI-driven productivity enhancement to ease the pressure of U.S. debt, based on historical experience and current reality, AI is unlikely to replicate the debt resolution miracles seen post-World War II or during the Clinton era in the short term. By the end of 2025, the scale of U.S. national debt will be close to $38 trillion, with net interest payments approaching $1 trillion.

The research report outlined three paths to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio: lowering interest rates, boosting economic growth, and shrinking the fiscal deficit. Historically, the U.S. has twice phased out debt: from 1946 to 1974, relying on post-war high growth and technological transformation, the debt ratio fell from over 100% to around 20% over 30 years; in the 1990s, leveraging the Internet revolution and the Clinton administration's fiscal discipline, achieving an annual average primary budget surplus of about 3.2% between 1996 and 2001.

However, this round of AI-powered debt reduction faces two main realistic constraints. First, there is a significant time lag in the release of AI productivity dividends. According to the University of Pennsylvania's estimation, from 2026 to 2027, AI can only boost total factor productivity by 0.05 to 0.1 percentage points, with its contribution not reaching around 0.2 percentage points until the early 2030s, far from sufficient to offset current fiscal pressures. Second, AI accelerates factor returns concentrating on the capital end, systematically eroding the tax base. U.S. individual income tax and payroll tax together contribute about 85% of federal revenue, and AI-induced labor displacement and wage suppression will directly impact this primary tax source; corporate income tax accounts for only about 10% and applies a single 21% tax rate, plus the tech giants' ability to avoid cross-border taxes, making it difficult to fill the personal tax gap, leading to a paradox of "the more technology flourishes, the more the tax base withers."

The research report believes that breakthrough directions include raising capital gains tax and wealthy class tax rates, imposing a "digital services tax" on large AI model commercial gains, and exploring a "robot tax" to subsidize the technically unemployed population, among others. However, they all face structural dilemmas such as the difficulty of cross-border tax administration for AI elements, the strong political bargaining power of tech giants, and unilateral tax hikes suppressing innovation. The research report concludes that the financial and tax compensation in the AI era is destined to be a long-term institutional tug-of-war, and the U.S. debt dilemma remains a significant obstacle for the U.S. economy to overcome in the short term.