City Supervisor Jane Kim, in a recent Letter to the Wall Street Journal Editor sang huzzahs for the city’s $15/hr minimum wage and touted a tax on robots that were replacing those low-skilled workers priced out of the labor market by that minimum wage.

The minimum wage isn’t a pathway to the middle class; it is a safety net to prevent destitution.

And

[A] “robot tax” is a practical way to smooth the transitions caused by automation….

She’s wrong.

I’m sure the robots and kiosks that are replacing those low-skilled workers appreciate being saved from destitution.

However, a true safety net would be a vasty reduction in San Francisco’s runaway regulatory regime and usurious tax scheme.  Then one of the most expensive cities in the nation could become affordable for the low-skilled and other poor.

Instead, the Supervisor wants to tax those robots and reduce them to similar jobless poverty.