Hillary Clinton supports workers. Some of them, at least. Clinton favors increasing the minimum wage. She wants equal pay for women and lower child care costs. She supports strong labor unions.

In her zeal to stand for workers, Clinton has expressed concern about disruptive technologies. Startups such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb comprise what Clinton calls a growing "sharing economy" that threatens traditional companies and their employees.

It is a legitimate concern. Cab drivers all over the country are losing income and jobs as ride-sharing companies undercut rates of less-efficient taxi cartels.

"Many Americans are making extra money renting out spare rooms, designing websites, selling products that they designed themselves at home, or even driving their own car," Clinton said last year, delivering her first economic policy speech of the campaign. The "sharing economy" is "raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future."

Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker shares Clinton's concern about disruptive technologies and this month signed into law a 5-cent tax on every fare charged by Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing apps. The tax will force ride-sharing companies and their customers to subsidize the cab industry, in the interest of protecting cab drivers.

Expect a spate of new regulations designed to curtail or destroy technologies that restructure commerce, all in the interest of protecting old jobs from disruptive new competition.

Efforts to protect and bolster low-wage jobs can seem egalitarian to voters.

Meanwhile, we hear almost nothing about protecting endangered high-wage jobs in the energy sector.

While fretting about "sharing" technologies, Clinton passionately supports President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan and all other aggressive mandates that disrupt traditional energy jobs.

Reasonable minds can disagree on the environmental benefits of alternative-fuels mandates, but none can argue they don't kill some of the best jobs available to men and women without college degrees.

The Clean Power Plan is expected to eliminate 125,800 mining-sector jobs and tens of thousands of jobs associated with conventional electric generation and transmission.

"The whole coal industry — soul of Colorado's North Fork Valley and other Western communities — is collapsing," explained a May 14 story in The Denver Post.

Statewide, the Post reports, coal production has plummeted by 50 percent since 2004. As mining towns become ghost towns, the Post explained, Colorado loses "a common world that gave continuity, identity and purpose."

Here's the good news: Clean air regulations are increasing demand for natural gas production, which provides good jobs. Alas, anti-fracking environmental regulations threaten to eliminate those jobs.

Candidates for public office are wise to express concern for workers and their wages. When they advocate minimum wages and other policies they claim will help workers, remind them of those Colorado miners and the dying towns their families call home. Ask what they'll do about that, and tell them all jobs matter.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE