The mandated minimum hourly rate led companies to buy robots. Anytime something is successful, leave it to the left to tax it to death.
But some of those SAME companies pushed for the higher wage and even gave it on their own.
probably knowing full well they wouldn’t need those folks soon because of robots
They’d end up an incentive for “shadow work”, the work they push onto customers and incentivize by making it more inconvenient if you don’t.
For example, they push people to use self-checkout by closing all but one or two manned checkout stations.