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Matthew Yglesias Profile picture
Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesias
Slow Boring, cohosting https://t.co/wxUj3JFSFf, Bloomberg columnist
45 subscribers
Apr 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The perception that it's impossible to shrink federal spending is wrong.

In the 1990s, we had balanced deficit reduction with spending cuts and revenue increases first with GHWB and then with Clinton.

Obama proposed doing it again and Boehner said no. Image Trump/Musk/DOGE came in and *did not even attempt to craft legislation about government spending* which of course turns out to be a major flaw in a push for spending cuts!
Apr 24 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I didn't express myself super-clearly here so let's just talk about another case — the Trump Trade War of 2025.

Because Trump has instigated this and because congressional Republicans are enabling it, there are absolutely right-wing media figures doing apologetics for it. 🧵 At the same time, if you get your news and information from highbrow right-of-center pundits and columnists — Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, The Free Press, etc — you'll see tons of Trump-friendly content in general and *tons* of criticism of tariffs.
Apr 10 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
A lot of "Abundance" discourse has been excessively abstract, so here's a concrete case.

Should one arm of the government (DOB) allow another arm of the government to (DCPS) to finish a school construction project on time or cater to local objectors?

eastoftheriverdcnews.com/2025/03/14/ken…Image To me, completing the school construction project on time so that kids can go to school in the fall and learn is clearly more important.

But if someone wants to argue the other side of it that would be an argument to have.

That's what's at issue here, though.
Mar 16 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think there’s no way to get around the fact that the core of nostalgianomics is a desire for the much larger *relative* male earnings premium and consequent lower bar (for men) to be a good catch. “Guy with an average job” commands much more purchasing power in 2025 than in 1955, but he is less impressive on the dating market than his grandfather would have been.
Mar 2 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The Vice President is one of the smarter and more articulate people in politics — he's written some very good articles and a pretty good book over the years — so I have to say I find the quality and quantity of the evidence he has produced here to be pretty disappointing. Image
Image I think it's notable that military spending as a share of the economy was lower at the end of the Biden administration than during any year of the Bush, Obama, or Trump administrations.

We could keep it up indefinitely, I believe. Image
Feb 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Again the whole thrust of Hauser’s work is thinking of ways to shrink the tent and naming people he wants to kick out of the party.

And what sucks about it is that he’s incredibly smart, hard-working, and effective at it! Democrats are a center-left party that support progressive taxation, a safety net, and reasonable regulation.

Most business owners will likely always prefer Republicans. But if some are a bit more broad-minded or culturally liberal than average and want to be Dems that’s good!
Feb 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A lot of the discussion from the Tech Right about how impressive Elon Musk is totally elides the question of goals.

I 100% believe based on his record that he is hyper-competent with skills that apply across multiple domains.

But what is the evidence that he cares about me? Cutting nutritional assistance and medical care for tens of millions of poor Americans to partially offset a corporate income tax cut might get a rocket to Mars faster but … is that good? Is that what I want?
Feb 18 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A somewhat frustrating dynamic at work here.

Critics of “woke” politics tend to focus on the most superficial manifestations because they are trying to proceed cautiously, but then counter-critics — like Traister here — counter that such superficial stuff can’t possibly matter. The dialogue eventually needs to pass into the less superficial issues that are genuinely in play — the rise of extremely simplistic disparate impact analysis as a controlling consideration in progressive policy.

slowboring.com/p/common-sense…
Jan 23 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I just want to clarify that I, personally, was not like secretly critical of this until Trump won. Here's my article from May 2021 about Tema Okun.

slowboring.com/p/tema-okun
Jan 17 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
To both agree and disagree with @ddayen's take, what happened is that Jake Sullivan, for national security reasons, tapped a bunch of people who reject conventional economic analysis to run domestic policy — but the people he platformed don't share his national security goals! I wrote a long series about this effort to create a "post-neoliberal" economic policy vision for America.

It's original sin is that it was based on the false premise that 1970-2020 was characterized by a "growth at all costs" paradigm.

slowboring.com/p/what-was-neo…
Jan 5 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I was well-informed about the Rotherham gang rape scandal ten years ago because I am a loyal consumer of the mainstream media Image
Image
Image [Guy who doesn’t follow the news] How come the media didn’t cover this? Image
Image
Dec 22, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I know a lot of people in the technology industry have deep admiration for @elonmusk and find it baffling that many others have a negative reaction to him despite his lofty ideals and undeniable achievements.

I have a theory about why some see him negatively. Just yesterday, Musk did a tweet in which he expressed totally unqualified dislike for old politicians.

And yet spent the recent campaign enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump over his much younger opponent. Image
Dec 18, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I wish philanthropists would pay more attention to what they are actually funding … is this Jeff Bezos’ politics? Image
Image I love Amazon so much but my guy’s last two tweets were kissing up to Donald Trump and he’s also giving millions of dollars to bizarre leftist groups … there is a happy medium to be found. Image
Dec 9, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I don’t think lack of age controls is even a top ten problem with Piketty, but we’re in right-wing backlash mode now so people can just post whatever and it’ll be popular. The first big issue that emerged very quickly after publication was exactly how much of this was purely a housing / land use issue, and of course this has become a much more mainstream concern over the past decade.

vox.com/2015/4/1/83209…
Dec 8, 2024 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion — pretty good stuff, gave lots of people access to health coverage and saved a ton of lives.

thelancet.com/journals/lanpu…Image But of course health insurance isn’t just about health — it’s a financial product that led to much better financial well-being for poor people.

nber.org/digest/aug16/f…Image
Image
Dec 5, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The cost savings in single-payer health systems come overwhelmingly from lower payments to providers rather than reduced administrative costs. Singapore’s system has a lot of virtues but conservatives don’t like to admit that it’s all underwritten by the Ministry of Health doing nationwide all-payer rate setting.
Nov 27, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I will say that I do not “want a politics organized around blaming economic bad guys like private equity.”

Businesses need to be regulated for various reasons, but I don’t think specifically demonizing a particular ownership structure makes a lot of sense. If someone is dumping toxic chemicals in the drinking water, I don’t really care if it’s a small family farm or a publicly traded agribusiness conglomerate or a private equity play or anything else.

The issue is the conduct and what the costs and benefits of banning it are.
Nov 21, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
One salient example of “identity politics” that hurt Democrats recently was the decision in 2020 to make Kamala Harris the VP nominee despite her poor electoral track record and unimpressive performance on the campaign trail because Biden “needed” to pick a black woman. But this also worked in the opposite direction, as when Democrats became so sure in 2024 that Harris’ vulnerabilities were identity-based rather than issue-based that they selected Dopey White Guy Tim Walz rather than someone more impressive or who could help her in key states.
Nov 19, 2024 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
A true fact is that I have some readers in the Biden White House and some good relationships there.

A non-true fact I have seen on social media is that the Biden administration "did everything Yglesias wanted."

A few examples: In March of 2021, I wrote that Biden's approach to the asylum issue was too lax and posing big political risks and he'd need to crack down. This happened, but it took *years* and I think was obviously politically costly.

slowboring.com/p/america-need…Image
Nov 19, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
No, what happened is that in countries with disparate economic policies — ranging from the robust welfare state of Germany to the highly regulated labor market of France to the United States and beyond — working class voters have swung against left stances on cultural issues. In the US context, if you roll the tape back to 2014 it was universally understood at the time that things like DAPA and the embrace of criminal justice reform were political risks. And despite those risks they nearly won in 2016. But it hasn’t worked out.
Nov 9, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The thing to consider is that people who pay the least attention to politics are likely to align with whichever coalition seems like it has the chiller, larger tent and makes the fewest demands of what it counts to be on the team. To be a resident in good standing of MAGA Island you need to basically say nice things about Trump — that’s a huge leap for many (he’s actually a scumbag!) but it’s pretty simple.

To be a Progressive In Good Standing is hard, long list of items to follow.