Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

There's a bit of a discourse/reality mismatch here, the Obama administration put some fairly weak accountability measures in place for universities and what Trump did was repeal them rather than make them stronger or broader. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Is Yglesias unaware that IRS funding is the bill's political weak point, or is that actually in the text of the article? Only one way to find out... https://t.co/iTL1KfgXbU https://t.co/5dVBz5iQ9x — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I wish Ruffini had included a link to the piece both because that would have been helpful to marketing and also because the tension he's pointing to is actually the lede of the article! https://t.co/iTL1KfgXbU — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@PatrickRuffini This is literaly the subject of the article. https://t.co/iTL1KfgXbU https://t.co/IIfvvxePEC — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I'm at a coffee shop in Foxhall right now where a townhouse that's not very large sells for over a million bucks. I think even under tough financing conditions people would build midrise apartments here if it was allowed. https://t.co/yCuuX9VLk7 — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

What I think happened in Minneapolis is they made a relatively modest policy change and it resulted in a relatively modest expansion in housing supply. If you made bigger changes or if more places made them, the impact would be larger. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I am happy to be Conor's straw-YIMBY here and say that I think it would genuinely be a panacea if every jurisdiction eliminated all land use restrictions on all residential parcels. I think housing would become *dramatically* more abundant under that policy paradigm. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@TheZvi Well they might just be old — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Say what you will about white male economists but they all attended college and are therefore much more likely than the average American (who did not) to have student loan debt. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I think the problem with student debt cancellation as an issue is that the set of people who don’t benefit from it includes most Americans. That’s true for any racial group, it’s true for any age cohort, etc. Most people don’t have any student debt. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Do they want Biden to let the terrorists in? I don’t get it. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@donmoyn @JStein_WaPo Exciting voters is fake though. What’s true is that some leftist groups are trying to get Biden to do something politically bad (very broad, inflationary debt relief) by threatening to try to deliberately damage his popularity if he doesn’t. But they’re just bad people. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@donmoyn @JStein_WaPo Yeah “exciting” voters is fake though. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Housing starts surged but completions didn’t because of shortages. Now starts are cratering because of the Fed but completions haven’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/ZyuzhrcCfE — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@donmoyn @JStein_WaPo This strikes me as a case where administrative burdens are good — Biden needs to fulfill a campaign promise but to the extent that you can use policymaking by other means to slyly minimize participation you help on inflation. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Always want to see more of this, explicitly linking the democracy issue to popular moderate policy positions. Say *why* Thiel is financing an attack on majority rule. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@ericlach You send the trial balloon to understand from which direction the shooting comes — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@JimPethokoukis Here in the imperial capital we solve this problem by banning skyscrapers altogether — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@conorsen The other thing is a lot of city council members like the idea of new property to tax that doesn’t come with new residents who might vote for your opponent — big bias toward zoning CBD-adjacent parcels for office rather than apartments. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@JHWeissmann @danielmarans I think it really undermines the putative critique of Martin O’Malley’s tenure to just invent a huge fictional scandal and coverup and have that be why Carcetti is a bad guy — it’s a major departure from the themes of the show and lacks integrity. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Thoughts inspired by @benthompson’s observation that the future of mass media is clips algorithmically selected to cater to your revealed preferences that auto-plays so you don’t need to admit to yourself that it’s what you genuinely want to watch. https://t.co/WFClCpnzXu — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

People really like to watch television so if the only thing on television at a given time is a staid, serious-ish news program there’s a good chance they’ll tune in. But in a more competitive environment that goes away and it’s a big deal. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

An important fact about western societies in the second half of the twentieth century is that governments either directly provided staid, serious-ish television news broadcasts or else forced private networks to do so even though there was no good business case for it. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

RT @newley: Apple is preparing to manufacture its new iPhone 14 in India months earlier than it did previous models, sign it’s boosting pro… — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

An actual drug cartel whose members colluded to restrain output and keep the price of heroin, meth, cocaine, and synthetic opioids artificially high would be pretty socially beneficial. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Considering getting really into LinkedIn. Seems like some good job opportunities here. https://t.co/ClQCwis4bX — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Those of us who own small businesses and are not cheating on our taxes shouldn't be made to feel like suckers — enforcing the tax laws is good. https://t.co/iTL1KfgXbU https://t.co/BVmv0J46FH — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

In general, electrical grids are kind of weird and unintuitive so in any system it's going to be the price of your marginal power source (whether that's gas or hydrogen or pumped hydro or whatever else) that determines the wholesale electricity price. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

In other words, even if you decisively commit to decarbonizing the price of fossil fuels remains very economically relevant all throughout the transition and is something you're going to need to worry about. Especially if the transition means nobody wants to invest in it. — PolitiTweet.org

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I think something that's not as widely understood as it should be is that even if you had a grid that's 85% renewables, swings in the price of whatever you're using for the last 15% (presumably gas) would still drive economy-wide energy prices. — PolitiTweet.org