tl;dr: A SF supervisor 'launched the "Jobs of the Future Fund", a crowdfunding effort to raise money to nudge the state to study the issue of what will happen to human workers in the age of automation.'

Related article: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2017/05/04/tax-robots-sf-supervis...

The fundamental problem: what's a "robot"?

We've been developing labor-saving devices and technologies since the dawn of civilization. Where's the line where a device becomes taxable?

Roomba? Teslas? A tractor? Looms? Machine tools? Drones? Printing presses? Teleprompters? Automated tomato sorting machines?

I'm all for figuring out the future where there are many unemployed workers because there are no longer enough labor jobs. But if we're taxing labor replacement, we might as well just raise the sales tax.