If Joe Scarborough had been around at the beginning of the 20th century, you might have found him on a street corner, haranguing anyone who would listen about the evils of the advent of the automobile. Flip to today, and there was Scarborough on Morning Joe, fulminating about artificial intelligence. AI is stealing jobs from younger Americans, says Joe. And that's because: "People in Washington will not stand up to tech monopolists. They will not stand up to the billionaires that run this economy. They will not stand up to the very people who are going to get richer and richer on AI and leave you and your friends and your generation further and further behind. It's that simple." Yes, so simple! Per Scarborough, the solution is so easy and obvious: "Break up tech monopolies."  Right on! Just like back in 1969, when the feds decided that IBM's supposed computer monopoly was the big threat, and brought an anti-trust lawsuit to break it up. Thirteen years, and tens of millions of dollars wasted by the feds and IBM later, the government withdrew the case, admitting it was "without merit." In the interim, many new companies had sprung up, producing faster, better, cheaper computers that peeled off big chunks of IBM's market share. Any possible monopoly had been undone not by government intervention, but by the power of free markets. And, seriously, Joe? AI monopolies are the problem? Have you not noticed the cutthroat competition among the many AI companies, and the producers of the chips that they depend on? If ever there were an industry that is not monopolized, it's AI! And yet, echoing Scarborough's call for the government to wield its powers, there was Axios honcho Jim VandeHei: "The only thing government should be talking about. How do we make sure that everybody benefits from this technology that's going to make a couple of companies awesomely powerful and awesomely rich? And that's fine if everybody else benefits from it. But if you have a bunch of people or a few people getting really rich, really powerful at the expense of everyone else, you're going to have a much bigger mess than we have today." Yup: We're from the government, and we're going to "make sure" that everybody benefits from AI--in the way that we politicians and bureaucrats think is best! VandeHei also buys into the notion that the wealth pie is limited: if some artificial intelligence creators are getting "awesomely rich," it will be "at the expense of everyone else" -- unless government steps in. Scarborough, wearing his best "AI, git-off-my-lawn!" face [see screencap], detected a dastardly scheme in which "political leaders" are "distracting" young people from realizing that AI is the cause of their job-hunting difficulties by instead blaming, among others, "Somalians."  "Somalians?" It's Somalis, Joe. And they are rightly being blamed—for massive fraud—but not for taking jobs. Perhaps since Scarborough was so focused on money this morning, he had "semolians"—that old-fashioned slang term for dollars—on the noggin, and that crept into his misnaming of Somalis. Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 1/23/26 6:04 am ET JOE SCARBOROUGH: We're talking about distractions like Greenland. We're talking about, I mean, and, you know, this guy right here [laughs as he points to photo of Howard Lutnick in the NYT] saying globalization has failed, when the United States has been dominant over the past 80 years because of it.  You talk about a distraction. You talk about what my football coach in high school would talk about majoring in the minors. It's just sheer insanity. This is something that should bring everybody together to figure out how working Americans don't get started -- and they're young! Coming out of our best colleges on the planet even, not being able to get jobs because of AI.  JIM VANDEHEI: I've never in my life seen a bigger disconnect between what people are fixating on and what they should fixate on. It's the only thing government should be talking about. How do we make sure that everybody benefits from this technology that's going to make a couple of companies awesomely powerful and awesomely rich?  And that's fine if everybody else benefits from it. But if you have a bunch of people or a few people getting really rich, really powerful at the expense of everyone else, you're going to have a much bigger mess than we have today.  And so hopefully, by writing about it, by you talking about it, eventually Congress, business leaders, teachers, everyone will start thinking about how do we equip everyone to make this shift? We can do this. I believe that we can do it, but not by ignoring it, right?  SCARBOROUGH: Right. And I mean, listen, and for younger Americans who are trying to figure out why they're not getting jobs, you can blame Somalians if you want to blame Somalians. It's horrible for you to be blaming Somalians, but I know you have political leaders that are telling you, you're not getting jobs because of Somalians. You're not getting jobs because of Mexicans. You're not getting jobs because people are coming from India and they're getting H-1B visas. I understand. I understand. That's what you hear on your feeds. That's what you see on your feeds all the time.  That's simply not the case. The problem right now is, especially right now over the past year to 18 months, you're not getting jobs out of college right now,  because as Jim VandeHei and Axios has [sic, have] reported, and other people have reported, CEOs are frozen. They're saying, we're not going to fire people. But with this AI technology, we don't have to hire anybody new. And we can just get rid of our workforce by attrition. That's what they're thinking right now.  So you blame the Somali eight states over from you. If that makes you feel better, that's not going to fix anything. And it's really bigoted.  So you should actually look what the real problem is. And understand, you have people in Washington, D.C. that will not stand up to tech monopolists. They will not stand up to the billionaires that run this economy. They will not stand up to the very people who are going to get richer and richer on AI and leave you and your friends and your generation further and further behind. It's that simple.  I mean, listen, you can keep getting distracted by things they're trying to get you to distract on. Well, Washington keeps passing tax cuts and keeps passing laws and keeps refusing to do the things they knew, do, need to do to break up tech monopolies.  If you don't want to focus on that, if that's too hard for you to read about, I mean, it shouldn't be. You're in college, for God's sake. You know, then that's your problem.