Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Literally all I said in the tweet is that the status quo works well for most people, which per (1) he concedes is true. The whole rest of the post is about things I think we should do to ameliorate preventable suffering. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Substack subscribers — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@MattBruenig I mean I think we agree it’s actually not uniform — different people reach different conclusions in part because they’re looking at different things. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

The bleak finding here is that as leisure time increases, time spent socializing doesn’t really — it’s just watching more TV. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

This guy is really committed to the bit https://t.co/PFlgMLyHJ7 — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@DeanBaker13 Right, I said the status quo is good for most people. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Liberalizing housebuilding would unlock huge economic gains. Here’s my effort to think through a politically viable win-win way to accomplish that in DC https://t.co/4tfaDTW151 — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I like this phrasing because it perfectly captures the central planning mindset at the root of bad American housing policy — we ought to have as much housing as builders are willing to build and buyers are willing to buy. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

RT @MarketUrbanism: The good news is that the agency is so bloated that efficiencies are very easy to find. The bad news is that it's so bl… — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

RT @salimfurth: This is an excellent proposal. I'm jealous that @mattyglesias came up with the idea of converting parking passes to taxi me… — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Italy seems to have led the world in class-inversion of its political alignment and it hasn’t worked out very well. https://t.co/hgLSPKf9R4 — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@CharlesFLehman I mean, surprise billing seems pretty bad. But congress passed a law about it, etc — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

My number one “unpopular opinion” that is actually extremely popular is that the US health care status quo is pretty good for most people. https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ https://t.co/zu01oicglR — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Poor Americans die younger than rich Americans, but even if you just look at rich Americans vs rich Europeans there’s a significant death gap. https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ https://t.co/sAJoReMK6S — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I think my father is a good illustration of @davidshor’s points about educational attainment as an individual versus ecological variable. My dad’s politics are unusual for a high school dropout but very normal for an UWS resident. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

My dad didn’t finish high school so blame him for all my bad takes. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@robertwiblin I really loved Oaxaca when I went — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

But the United States is a very rich country (note that this is medians, it’s not about inequality) and it seems like translating that material abundance into into being closer to Austria than Mexico in terms of life expectancy should be a major goal. https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ https://t.co/8IJh6U2l2g — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

But I’d also just say “why did this happen historically?” is not identical to the question “what can we do to improve it?” and what’s striking me is how little interest there in the US political debate in the topic, it’s not considered a major problem. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s also worth nothing that most of the major obvious lifestyle differentiators were in place 10 or 20 years ago and don’t obviously explain why the gap between the US and the rest of the G7 is *growing* (and this is before the murder surge) https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ https://t.co/6d1BsVUZFh — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

The Twitter Discourse on this subject ricochets between people who say this is “obviously” a result of our health care system and then others pointing out that it’s mostly about murder, car crashes, overdoses, and obesity. But my point is — it’s bad. https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I’m back in the USA to say that the American policy debate should probably focus more on the fact that we are constantly dying. https://t.co/92djCTYsaQ https://t.co/8IbbP7ezX0 — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Seems bad — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

When you try to turn a continuous variable (economic growth) into a binary (recession/not-recession) then you are inevitably going to have some arbitrariness in drawing the boundary. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@brianbeutler Still … why dunk? What is the case for dunking? What cause is advanced by dunking? — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

The impulse on the left to dunk on the most banal messaging points from Democrats — not policy betrayals, just rhetorical gambits aimed at broadening the coalition — is really deranged. https://t.co/7S4UY8Dphw — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@kdrum Stipulating that you are right and everyone else is wrong and the housing shortage is a myth, it’s still the case that there are a lot of regulatory barriers to house-construction and housing would be more abundant in their absence. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Retail transactions in the United States take place with incredible speed compared to in Italy. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

The interesting divergence is between the rising cost of “education” (a human teacher who also does evaluations and bestows a credential) and the falling cost of “use the internet to learn something.” — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I always think the reasonable process here isn’t to compare health care and higher ed costs to durable goods, it’s to look at things like veterinary care and summer camp. — PolitiTweet.org