San Francisco County Supervisor Jane Kim is investigating how a tax on robots might help to mitigate the job destruction of the coming automated workplace, perhaps following the suggestion of Microsoft founder Bill Gates who recommended a few months ago that job-killing robots should be taxed

Is this not an ironic turn of politics? The famously open-borders, criminal-friendly, illegal-alien-welcoming city by the bay is fearful that automation will snatch jobs away from residents. Say! — perhaps San Francisco could enact a special tax on job-stealing illegal aliens for their extra burden on the system. If that’s not too reasonable. . .

Being a tech hub — and now the northerly extension of Silicon Valley — San Francisco has seen the job-crunching machines up close and personal, including a robot barista, an automated security guard and the “LoweBot” hardware store shopper guides that are already in action.

Below, San Francisco latte guzzlers may now have their brew prepared by a robot coffee machine, a device that endangers the livelihoods of barista workers, both college-educated and not.

San Francisco often wrongly fantasizes itself as being ahead of the rest of the country, but in this case it is actually is debating a problem that Washington is ignoring to the peril of all Americans.