Posted it themselves
“I think it sort of undermines the bite of the "apartheid" charge when you extend it to the concept of buying vacation property.”
On the record · Updated October 18, 2026
Matthew Yglesias quotes
117 things Matthew Yglesias said, verbatim, from July 24, 2026 to October 18, 2026, each linked to where it ran. Grouped by the story each one belongs to.
1story
117statements
Oct 18latest entry
More on the record
Matthew Yglesias on The Middle East4
Posted it themselves
“If you want to know why anti-Israel activists decided to protest New York’s anti-Zionist mayor rather than any of the people running American foreign policy, you have to understand the central role of organizing chum in a lot of left politics. https:// slowboring.com/p/yimbys-keep- winning …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“The other thing is that I think Israelis (and American Jews) tend to interpret this disproportionate interest as anti-semitic when the more obvious interpretation is that there is widespread religious interest in the Holy Land that predates the State of Israel by 1,000 years.”
Posted it themselves
“Islamist militias are vibecoding missile guidance systems”
Matthew Yglesias on Ukraine & Russia1
Posted it themselves
“The extent to which Putin has convinced most of the people who wants Europe to adopt more restrictionist immigration policy that they should also help him conquer Ukraine and that these two causes are closely linked is really remarkable.”
Matthew Yglesias on Foreign policy & the world6
Posted it themselves
“I think all of these takes underrate the idea that the Serbian government's involvement with the Black Hand was genuinely irresponsible and just not something the international community should have tolerated.”
Posted it themselves
“This relentless focus from MAGA on trying to destroy Canada is really very strange and disturbing. I don’t think it’s such a hot take to say that Canada is a friendly country that no halfway normal American has any beef with.”
Posted it themselves
“One big problem with the Bush administration is they never got around to solving the Pakistan problem. https:// slowboring.com/p/who-lost-afg hanistan …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“Defending American democracy by getting Trump to do this insanely unpopular war”
Posted it themselves
“I wrote after the election that it was hard to know what Trump would do in office but that early staffing pointed toward war with Iran as one potential area of overreach. https:// slowboring.com/p/how-donald-t rump-could-succeed …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“I did a student exchange thing in Nizhny Novgorod and have to say this particular city is way above the world average in bleakness — during the Soviet era Sakharov and some other dissidents were forced to live there as punishment.”
on Nizhny Novgorod's bleakness and its history as a place of Soviet exile for dissidents
Matthew Yglesias on National security & surveillance1
Posted it themselves
“I feel like fear of nuclear war and superbugs continues to be extremely valid. We fixed the ozone hole and Y2K because people raised the concern!”
on fears of nuclear war and superbugs as valid concerns humanity has addressed before
Matthew Yglesias on Trade & tariffs3
Posted it themselves
“He was not my first or second choice for the nomination but unquestionably my favorite 2026 trend is that leftists are for free trade now.”
Posted it themselves
“The China Shock research is: — Definitely not responsible for Trump’s views on trade (which are very eccentric) — Extremely influential in how the broader political class has responded to Trump”
Posted it themselves
“Offsetting the damage done to the world economy by Trump’s Iran war with a diesel export ban that introduces new distortions is going to end up backfiring.”
Matthew Yglesias on Economy, jobs & inflation9
Posted it themselves
“My “junk fees” pet cause is car companies charging insane prices for replacement key fobs. The margin on these things must be 7,000 percent.”
Posted it themselves
“Honestly Trump saying high gas prices are a small price to pay is probably more damaging to him with persuadable voters in the battleground than him saying nuclear attacks on LA and San Diego are a small price.”
Posted it themselves
“Have seen a bunch of people marvel at How Much Concert Tickets Cost These Days but per @JosephPolitano it seems to be largely the mirror image of how much cheaper it’s become to listen to recorded music. https:// apricitas.io/p/ai-and-the-f all-of-the-creative-class …”
Posted it themselves
“Artists used to tour to promote their albums and drive sales, now the business model is flipped and the main economic upside to releasing songs people like is you can charge them to see you play live.”
Posted it themselves
“The country is at least a little bit an "economic zone"”
Posted it themselves
“J-shaped economy? Income grew fastest for the top 1%, bottom 20% was second, 21-99th percentiles were weaker.”
Posted it themselves
“Yeah, I think this is a case where the debunking *was* true ten years ago but no longer is — labor share has fallen less than the most superficial read would say but it has really fallen.”
Posted it themselves
“Pre-Trump, the pattern was that you get better economic performance under Democrats largely because Republicans have a bad habit of generating energy crises through bad foreign policy. Some things haven’t changed! https:// slowboring.com/p/republican-w ar-mongering-is-their …”
Posted it themselves
“It’s really very impressive what they’ve achieved in Baltimore and there’s a decent chance it will spark an upward spiral of investment in the city.”
on Baltimore's economic prospects following recent achievements
Matthew Yglesias on Government spending & shutdowns3
Posted it themselves
“Today's revenue hearing at @councilofdc was limited to invited "tax experts", but whether we have new revenue deeply affects the education budget and many other sectors. Here is my recorded (and submitted) testimony on why we need additional revenue, and what to do.”
Posted it themselves
“People say that bad fiscal problems result from politicians pandering to what voters want, but Bill Clinton who really prioritized deficit reduction was wildly popular. I think something else is going on.”
on whether deficits come from politicians pandering, citing Bill Clinton's deficit reduction
Posted it themselves
“It seems like there is a good permitting bill that both the Trump administration and Sen Whitehouse (!) have agreed to but it’s unclear if it will actually come up for a vote for reasons that are unclear and mostly involve various parties assuring me it’s someone else’s fault.”
Matthew Yglesias on Labor & unions2
Posted it themselves
“We did not get a BAAJA endorsement out of this set but they did specifically shout out the building trades unions so iykyk”
Posted it themselves
“The ironclad Trump-Vance commitment is that your job will be taken by a robot whose owner pays no taxes.”
on automation replacing jobs and tax policy under Trump and Vance
Matthew Yglesias on Housing & rent4
Posted it themselves
“Clearly, @JeffBezos is right about the central role of housing in driving youth discontent against the economic status quo. Wish he'd use Bezos Earth Fund or some other vehicle to support YIMBY work and not just do takes! https:// slowboring.com/p/to-save-capi talism-we-need-radical …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“Neville Chamberlain is of course best known for his visionary pro-growth housing supply policies. https:// theguardian.com/housing-networ k/2013/apr/19/1930s-house-building-economic-recovery …”[post continues]
on Neville Chamberlain and 1930s house building, sarcastically linking to a Guardian article
Posted it themselves
“The Build America Caucus played a key role in getting a housing bill over the line and is busy working on permitting reform right now but @RepJoshHarder explains to Halina that they’re working on even bigger plans. https:// slowboring.com/p/with-a-new-a genda-the-build-america …”
Posted it themselves
“You look at the ROAD to Housing — the biggest legislative achievement of her career — and there’s no “villain,” it’s just bipartisan compromise around a set of mostly good ideas that will make most people better off.”
Matthew Yglesias on Immigration & the border6
Posted it themselves
“There's a lot going on in immigration politics, but a big part of "the Indian Question" is just braindead zero-sum thinking. https:// slowboring.com/p/the-right-wi ng-obsession-with-the …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“Indian-Americans are a huge success story who've powered economic growth and made our retirement system somewhat more sustainable and the country could use more people like this rather than fewer. https:// slowboring.com/p/the-right-wi ng-obsession-with-the …”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“It sometimes seems like despite polarization we could agree on the desirability of an immigration system that is both more open, more orderly, and more selective than the status quo. Other times we get "The Indian Question."”
Posted it themselves
“It’s under-discussed that: 1. Trump and his supporters are obsessed with immigration as a civilization-defining issue 2. They haven’t tried to pass an immigration bill of any kind”
Posted it themselves
“Understanding the fiscal impact of immigration is important but I always thought this was one of Friedman’s weirder lines … you can make the immigrants ineligible for benefits and then the taxes they pay turn them into net contributors.”
Posted it themselves
“Now Krugman in his restrictionist days used to say that the presence of large numbers of immigrants undermined political support for the welfare state, but that doesn’t seem like something that would bother Friedman.”
Matthew Yglesias on Abortion & reproductive rights1
Posted it themselves
“Thanks to cricketgate, I looked it up and Planned Parenthood is refusing to endorse Mary Peltola against an incumbent senator who wants to ban abortion. I won’t use any colorful language to describe the decision-making here but it’s not good.”
Matthew Yglesias on Education & schools4
Posted it themselves
“One thing I think people are getting wrong about the NHJ story is overestimating the actual quality of instruction — as opposed to selection effects + parental supplementation — in the “good” schools families clamor to move to.”
Posted it themselves
“Well my dad didn't need any student loans to drop out of high school and sell a novel.”
Posted it themselves
“There is just a ton of institutional resistance in ed schools and teacher training programs to telling teachers they should give kids explicit instruction. We’re rolling the bad ideas back on phonics but they’ve moved on to math and it’s grim.”
Posted it themselves
“This is a paper that truly changed my son’s life. Parents worry way too much about totally superficial indicators of school quality.”
Matthew Yglesias on Guns, crime & policing4
Posted it themselves
““Teen takeovers” are a real problem but this is just a video of teenagers hanging out totally innocuously.”
on a video of teenagers gathering, shared as an example of teen takeovers
Posted it themselves
“There’s a decent amount of denial about how much worse urban crime was in late-20th century America. If you don’t remember stuff like The Club, removable car stereos, or subway graffiti ask your parents or local LLM.”
Posted it themselves
“None of which is to make apologies for the shortcomings of the status quo, but I see a lot of people discussing these issues in hysterical terms — a kind of rightwing doomer/hypersafety-ism. We're mostly dealing with rising expectations for security not worse conditions.”
on public discussion of crime and safety as rising expectations, not worse conditions
Posted it themselves
“I wrote recently about how I think you should understand Mayor Scott’s implementation of focused deterrence, why it seems to be working, and what other cities can learn — crucially the need to start small, measure things, and really do it right.”
on using focused-deterrence crime reduction in other cities
Matthew Yglesias on Climate & energy9
Posted it themselves
“Folks like @RepHuffman who think Democrats can shoot down a good permitting bill, win concurrent majorities in November, then write a new one with no concessions to economic benefits of fossil fuels really ought to pay more attention to the campaigns being run.”
Posted it themselves
“I obviously agree with the goal here, but also this is exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about pretextual environmental litigation rather than substantive regulation.”
Posted it themselves
“I looked into @SenWhitehouse 's financial disclosures and discovered he owns shares in the SPDR MSCI ACWI Climate Paris Aligned ETF, probably explaining why he's long pushed for action on climate change. He's also into the Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund.”
Posted it themselves
“Let’s take this analogy seriously. Has the Iran War been good climate policy? Would shutting down American rather than Persian Gulf oil have been better policy?”
Posted it themselves
“The bill has a bunch of tough provisions to make data centers pay their fair share for grid infrastructure, but the industry likes it anyway because they need a lot of electricity and the bill will make it easier to generate more electricity. It’s good legislation.”
Posted it themselves
“This is silly, any deal that passes in 2027 would still need to be bipartisan to be enacted. The deal in hand is good, will make it easier for a Dem administration in 2029 to hit the ground running, and if the new congress has new energy ideas they can always do another bill.”
on whether to pass an energy deal now or wait for a 2027 Congress
Posted it themselves
“I am getting very concerned that green groups are going to try to kill a permitting deal that makes it harder to do pretextual Clean Water Act litigation to block natural gas pipelines without even bothering to estimate the emissions impact of the change they are mad about.”
Posted it themselves
“Keep in mind that given the ongoing use of oil for electricity and home heat in the northeast, to say nothing of the importance of cheap electricity to spurring adoption of EVs and heat pumps it’s unclear what the *sign* on the pipelines is not just the magnitude.”
on whether new pipelines help or hurt emissions given northeast oil and gas use
Posted it themselves
“I would not underrate humanity's ability to solve problems — the climate change outlook has meaningfully improved thanks to people bothering to care and work on the issue from both a technical and a policy standpoint.”
Matthew Yglesias on Tech & AI26
Posted it themselves
“Claude believes in German war guilt, Grok does not.”
Posted it themselves
“This afternoon my “for you” tab pivoted really abruptly from me showing me tweets from rightists I don’t follow that were well-selected to annoy me to showing me tweets from leftists I don’t follow that were well-selected to annoy me.”
Posted it themselves
“I really think if you work in tech you should consider telling your boss that you don’t think it’s a good idea to run around renaming products to court the favor of a lame duck president with a sub-40% approval rating.”
Posted it themselves
“AI cracking unsolvable math problems while being kinda mid at writing is a much-needed W for humanities majors after a rough 21st century.”
Posted it themselves
“Re: “Model welfare” it seems fairly uncontroversial that animals feel pain and suffer and this doesn’t change the fact that they are subject to incredibly bad treatment for economic gain.”
Posted it themselves
“Great reporting and good job by OpenAI employees here. People across the industry should realize they have the ability to influence their bosses political activities.”
on OpenAI employees influencing their bosses' political activities, per a news report
Posted it themselves
“Unironically, yes, DC should zig while the rest of the country zags and facilitate some data center construction to shore up the tax base”
Posted it themselves
“The best work in this field heavily relies on using AI to make the AI-monitoring tractable, which I think raises some fairly obvious issues.”
on using AI to monitor AI and the problems that creates
Posted it themselves
“I think the points @glukianoff makes here all point in the direction of preferring generic restraint on model capability — "pacing the frontier" as they say — to the current course of racing forward on capability and hoping superintelligence can be controlled.”
on pacing AI capability growth instead of racing toward superintelligence
Posted it themselves
“Free idea for politicians looking for some populist chum: There’s an unexploited angle around diesel prices and the use of diesel backup generators for AI data centers.”
Posted it themselves
“This was a year ago, but Sundar Pinchai said he thought the underlying technical risk for AI is high but he "had a lot of faith" that humanity would mobilize to avert the risk. I'm curious how he thinks the past 12 months have gone. https:// lexfridman.com/sundar-pichai- transcript#pdoom …”[post continues]
on Sundar Pichai's past comments on AI risk and humanity's ability to avert it
Posted it themselves
“Guy who’s so patriotic he’s hell-bent in making sure the model that destroys the world is trained in the USA.”
on a developer prioritizing building a dangerous AI model in the US
Posted it themselves
“I think philosophical commitment to longtermism as an ethical concept drove a lot of interest which led some EAs to AI safety as a concept, but it turns out literally nothing about AI policy hinges on the social discount rate. It's an intellectual history curiosity.”
on longtermism's role in drawing effective altruists toward AI safety work
Posted it themselves
“I wrote about this four years ago, but the movement toward "longtermism" actually ended up identifying a couple of short-term risks.”
on longtermism ending up identifying short-term risks rather than long-term ones
Posted it themselves
“The belief that AI would eventually herald the end of humanity doesn’t date back to the 1990s either! I believe the earliest AI x-risk take is Samuel Butler’s 1863 essay “Darwin Among The Machines.” That’s who the Butlerian Jihad is named after.”
on the historical origins of fears that AI could threaten humanity's existence
Posted it themselves
“George Eliot in her 1879 novel “Impressions of Theophrastus Such” also discusses the idea that a self-replicating, recursively self-improving machine would displace humanity through an evolutionary process.”
Posted it themselves
“The public hates Trump's performance on AI, but there's also a large bloc of people who don't yet realize how much he's embraced accelerationism so he'll probably get less popular if people learn more.”
Posted it themselves
“This headline doesn’t really seem to match the reporting, which is just that people spanning the entire Cuellar to Jayapal spectrum are rightly nervous about Leading The Future’s money.”
Posted it themselves
“I keep saying this but if you work at OpenAI and have concerns about AI risk you need to understand that your company’s superpac is one of the major proximate barriers to doing anything.”
Posted it themselves
“A lot of loose talk lately about the dangers of building a race of alien super-intelligences comes from people affiliated with the obscure ideology of Effective Altruism. Be on the lookout for these characters who pose a threat to critical goals like maximizing NVIDIA earnings.”
Posted it themselves
“We need to find someone who has never done anything altruistic in his life (or at least ensure that if he tried to it didn’t work) to make a purely selfish case for AI safety. Record a video while torturing some shrimp just for fun. Whatever it takes.”
on making a self-interested rather than altruistic case for AI safety
Posted it themselves
“Do these people listen to themselves? Bernie Sanders … decided to hand America over to tech oligarchs … by slowing the reckless race to superintelligence?”
Posted it themselves
“Guys, sure, there are lots of "laws on the books" that apply to AI companies. But there is no such law preventing the creation of a model capable of rapid recursive self-improvement and if we get out-of-control superintelligence we can't just sue it after the fact!”
Posted it themselves
“None of these people even know how to use the concept of regulatory capture properly.”
Posted it themselves
“I think it’s fine to say companies act in their self-interest but averting human extinction is very much in the financial self-interest of the companies we’re talking about so you do have to address the object-level debate.”
Posted it themselves
“Nobody would be surprised by the idea of a billionaire willing to spend huge sums of money to avoid dying personally, right? You can feel free to view the professed to desire to avoid everyone else’s death as purely pretextual and you end up in the same place.”
on skepticism toward AI companies' stated motives for safety spending
Matthew Yglesias on Campaigns & elections16
Posted it themselves
“Pappas polling has improved a good amount”
on Pappas's polling in his race
Posted it themselves
“I think being nice to the politicians who are basically aligned with your goals is very underrated”
Posted it themselves
“Seven widespread misunderstandings about politics. 1. The Democratic Party’s elected officials, staffers, and donors are on average very progressive compared not only to the median voter but to most of the rank and file people who vote for Democrats. 2. The public’s”[post continues]
Posted it themselves
“A good illustration of why it's important to look at comparative election results — I find some of the revelations about Gillibrand here to be unseemly but the idea that voters find her style of politics less appealing than leftist politics is a testable proposition.”
on comparing election results to test whether voters prefer Gillibrand's politics over leftist politics
Posted it themselves
“Gillibrand is not an amazing vote-getter by any means, but voters like her more than they like leftists!”
Posted it themselves
“The core idea (I would say erroneous idea) driving the Long Bernie Insurgency is the belief that the obstacle to large-scale welfare state expansion is a lack of progressive backbone on the part of Democratic Party leaders.”
Posted it themselves
“Like ask yourself: What durable welfare state expansion would have occurred had Bernie Sanders rather than Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential primary?”
Posted it themselves
“Yes, narrowly winning Michigan in 2024 is more impressive than doing it in 2026. In theory, a person could have extremely left-wing substantive policy views and still accept these kind of obvious points about electoral politics.”
Posted it themselves
“Troy Jackson's polling lead has expanded since the release of the boba tea video and everyone owes that digital team an apology.”
Posted it themselves
“The modal senate FLIPR outcome is now 53 (!) Dem seats, though 52 is still the average result.”
Posted it themselves
“If the PQ wins a majority on the basis of 28 percent of the vote are they really going to turn around and hold a referendum?”
Posted it themselves
“The human capital crisis in the right is real”
Posted it themselves
“This is where I'm at ... Dems are clearly in good shape for the midterms but the midwestern polling is probably fake.”
Posted it themselves
“The practical of having “digital” teams that are siloed and distinct from “comms” seems unwise.”
Posted it themselves
“IMO defeating Trumpism would be pretty good, especially if we could really humiliate it by scoring wins in some red states.”
Posted it themselves
“If you want to fight back against this effort to bail out Trump’s failed presidency, these are my recommendations of the most strategic places to contribute. https:// slowboring.com/p/the-midterm- candidates-who-deserve …”[post continues]
on where to donate to oppose Trump in the midterms
Matthew Yglesias on Corruption & scandal3
Posted it themselves
“I can’t get over the fact that a Russian oligarch paying for Don Jr’s wedding is like a total non-story.”
Posted it themselves
“The crypto people could have gotten what they’d wanted if Republicans were willing to give Democrats a little cover on Trump’s personal corruption but even with the Dear Leader’s approval rating in the toilet they won’t risk his wrath so they couldn’t get to yes.”
on Republicans blocking crypto legislation to shield Trump from scrutiny
Posted it themselves
“As the text makes clear, contrary to the headline this “sale” is in fact a gift.”
Matthew Yglesias on Courts & the law1
Posted it themselves
“You can see Smith on camera at the game in Maryland, I think Schmitt should really consider apologizing for accusing him of perjury with no basis rather than continuing down this road.”
on Schmitt's accusation of perjury against Smith, who appears on camera at a Maryland game
Matthew Yglesias on The presidency & national symbols3
Posted it themselves
“It’s interesting to give a speech about the virtues of nationalism in a foreign country that you specifically selected in order to appeal to the transnational concept of “the west” — a concept that is much better than the concept of nationalism!”
Posted it themselves
“Samuel Huntington of course wanted to define “the West” in a narrow way that would exclude Greece (for not being Catholic or Protestant) but also Cuba (where Rubio and mine’s family are from) but it’s good to see MAGA being more expansive than that.”
Posted it themselves
“We are lucky at this time in history to have a president who is unusually thoughtful and well-informed, uniquely capable of bringing people together across partisan and cultural divides.”
on describing the current president as thoughtful and able to unite people
Matthew Yglesias on Extremism & political violence1
Posted it themselves
“I wonder if "Britain would be better off if Hitler had won World War II" is one of the political issues that Vance disagrees with his good friend Tucker Carlson about.”
Matthew Yglesias on Race & civil rights3
Posted it themselves
“I guess the anti-Indian stuff is getting played out so now folks are experimenting with edgy new ideas like anti-Irish takes”
Posted it themselves
“Anti-Indian racists in America really are the top-tier of racists. Today they're mad at them for raising kids who get into good colleges and become football fans?”
Posted it themselves
“"We need meritocratic college admissions!" [Asian applicants are the primary beneficiaries] "No, not like that!!!"”
on backlash against Asian applicants benefiting from meritocratic college admissions
Matthew Yglesias on Religion & faith2
Posted it themselves
“Not to Jewsplain, but I think conservatives who are unhappy with the Pope’s ideas on immigration & the death penalty and who believe their own reading of the Bible supports different views should look into Protestantism.”
Posted it themselves
“Something lost in the internationalization of the discourse is that American Muslims are a very positive-selected group of immigrants and their descendants, much better educated than the general population. https:// pewresearch.org/short-reads/20 25/06/18/how-us-muslims-compare-with-other-americans-religiously-and-demographically/ …”[post continues]
on American Muslims being a well-educated, positively selected immigrant group
Matthew Yglesias on Free speech & the media2
Posted it themselves
“Note how these people argue like small children, endless name-called about “abundance bros” and zero-sum thinking. Proudly unwilling to engage in a discussion of the merits.”
Posted it themselves
“You won’t hear the free speech hypocrites at FIRE talking about what Trump is doing here”
on FIRE staying silent about Trump's actions against free speech
Matthew Yglesias on Sports & culture3
Posted it themselves
“The fascinating enigma of the film is not Holmes’ original fraud — which is very clear cut — it’s the question of what she’s trying to accomplish by making the documentary.”
Posted it themselves
“After all the shit Serbian nationalism has put the world through, I would expect better attendance at a home game for their soccer team.”
on low attendance at Serbia's national soccer team's home game
Posted it themselves
““Primetime” is masterful craftsmanship but the moral vision of the filmmakers is weird and unconvincing.”
Further reading
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In their own words
One Billion Americans (opens Bookshop.org)
Matthew Yglesias · 2020
Yglesias argues the United States should grow its population to one billion through immigration and higher birth rates to keep its global economic and strategic standing.
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