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David Henderson knows an absurd economic argument when he sees one.

My Mercatus Center colleague Jack Salmon is justly critical of Jasper Boll’s, Emmanuel Saez’s, and Gabriel Zucman’s attempted justification for increasing the taxation of billionaires.

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post rightly criticizes Elizabeth Warren’s predictable impulse to have government intervene in the economy. A slice:

Warren hasn’t arrived at her position because she thinks AI will be beneficial to workers, however. Instead, she thinks it “could further rig our economy,” driving up unemployment and the price of electricity.

“Americans are hanging on by their fingernails in an economy that funnels wealth to the ultra-rich and leaves crumbs for working people,” Warren writes.

Never mind that the latest survey of financial well-being from the Federal Reserve found that 73 percent of Americans say they’re doing fine. And some 81 percent of workers who use generative AI say it saves time.

Warren has never been one to let the data inhibit her demagoguery. The primary opportunity Warren sees in AI is not enhancing productivity or helping cure diseases. She sees it as a revenue piñata for politicians to whack.

Also from the Washington Post‘s Editorial Board is this just criticism of labor unions continuing to do what labor unions have long been in the habit of doing: Seeking monopoly privileges for their members at the expense of consumers and non-unionized workers. Two slices:

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry and make U.S. roads safer. Yet unions are doing everything they can to keep them off the road.

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This is rent-seeking, plain and simple. These unions represent an established industry looking to use state governments’ control of public roads to cut off competition.

David Neumark finds that minimum-wage legislation isn’t closing racial gaps.

Darin Bartram warns of the regrettable precedent being set by Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund. Two slices:

There are plenty of reasons to be wary of President Trump’s so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund, which will compensate claimants who say federal law-enforcement or regulatory agencies targeted them for political reasons. These include the cost, nearly $2 billion in public funds, and the wrongful actions of many of the prospective recipients, including rioters who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6, 2021.

Here’s another reason: It will set a precedent that a future president could use to bypass Congress and the courts to implement wide-reaching policies without congressional support—including race-based reparations.

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Remedying perceived harm to Mr. Trump’s supporters stemming from the Russia-collusion investigations or the events following Jan. 6 could seamlessly morph into a future president’s deciding to implement an even broader remedial program—providing reparations to black Americans for slavery and “systemic racism.” The Trump fund would give legitimacy to administrative compensation for a politically defined class of government victims—even if neither Congress nor any court has authorized such compensation.

Justice should be administered impartially and shouldn’t be weaponized against political rivals. That happened with Mr. Obama’s Russia-collusion investigation, which continued through Mr. Trump’s first term. It continued through the Biden administration. But the Anti-Weaponization Fund is the wrong remedy, and one that risks making the government even more lawless.

Erik Lidström explores “our stone age brain in Adam Smith’s Great Society.”

Norbert Michel and Jai Kedia describe the Federal Reserve’s post-2008 powers as “a fiscal time bomb.”

Clark Packard identifies yet another of Trump’s trade ‘policies’ that is likely driven, not by any principle – in particular, here, to reduce U.S. reliance on critical imports from China – but, rather, by self-dealing. A slice:

China’s rare-earth chokehold poses genuine strategic and economic problems—one serious enough to briefly shutter American auto plants and rattle defense procurement officials when Beijing moved to restrict exports in 2025. A supply chain concentrated in the hands of a single foreign country willing to use it as a lever in trade disputes demands a serious and credible policy response. What the Vulcan situation describes is the opposite and implies a larger inherent flaw with industrial policy: A $670 million government commitment, including the largest Pentagon loan of its kind, pushed through in weeks at the direction of a White House official with a personal relationship to the president’s son, whose venture fund had taken a stake in the recipient company three months earlier.

Whether or not the sequence of events proves anything unlawful, or mere coincidence, it is exactly the kind of arrangement that erodes public confidence and raises a straightforward question that has so far gone unanswered: If the administration is serious about reducing American dependence on Chinese rare-earth supply chains, why does its industrial policy find a way to personally benefit the president’s family? Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but the public has a right to know more.