Matthew Yglesias

Humpty Dumpty Yglesias.

Oh no, they're talking about Politics

Theory

Political spectrum Political party Government (forms of)

Practice

International relations Propaganda War

Philosophies

Laissez-faire Paleolibertarianism Minarchism

Terms

Astroturf Equality Income tax

As usual

Computing Forever Areo Magazine Political parties of Ireland

Country sections

v - t - e

Matthew Yglesias (1981–) is an American centrist blogger and journalist who writes about economics and politics. Yglesias has written columns and articles for publications such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Slate. In November 2020, he left his position as an editor and columnist for the news website Vox, which he co-founded in 2014, to publish the Substack newsletter Slow Boring.

Views

Like many centrists, Yglesias has no core principles and has often embraced whatever is trendy at the moment. He supported the 2003 Iraq War when that was fashionable and then later turned against it once the public mood changed. He supported Clintonite neoliberal policies when that seemed like the "smart" thing to do until Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, after which he became a Bernie Sanders supporter when it looked like all the cool kids were doing that. Once the Bernie movement lost steam in 2020, Yglesias quickly pivoted to "anti-woke" talking points along with his old interest in racist pseudoscience. He has particularly taken to promoting the work of eugenicist and racist crank Richard Hanania and giving Steve Sailer a platform to spew his racist garbage. It is unclear why Yglesias doesn't simply block Sailer so that his followers are not constantly subjected to Sailer's racist rants whenever they look at Yglesias's replies, thus allowing Sailer to gain more readers and followers. It is also unclear why he is so blasé about Hanania's continued promotion of racist pseudoscience.

His nationalism and terrible ideas

In 2020, Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs published a review of Yglesias's book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger with the not so neutral headline "Why Nationalism Is A Brain Disease."

Robinson begins the review by writing:

Yglesias’ book is an absolutely fascinating document, because it is both intelligent and deranged. It is intelligent because it is mostly dedicated to suggesting a series of sensible social democratic political policies and making clear arguments for them. It is deranged because all of it is built atop a wildly irrational and dangerous set of assumptions that are never defended but simply posited as true.

Robinson specifically notes how Yglesias is basing this book on the notion that the United States needs to remain the number one global power in the world, but despite that being the entire premise of the book, Matt does essentially nothing to argue for it being a good thing:

The book’s whole argument for having a billion Americans is that America should want to stay Number One in the world. Yglesias’ argument is: no reasonable American (except some “left wing intellectuals”) would disagree that we should try to be more powerful than all of the other countries. But if we are to do this, it will require having far more people. Otherwise, we will end up being a “second-rate” power like Portugal or Canada, a “little dog” compared with China and India. Hence, the uncontroversial premise that we must be #1 leads to the controversial conclusion that doing so will require a vast population increase and lots more immigration and infrastructure spending and such.

But let’s linger on the uncontroversial premise. Yglesias is absolutely right: no elected official in the country would say that America should be content to lose its status as the most powerful country in the world. For Yglesias, a thinker from the mainstream of American liberalism, the fact that no elected American would dispute this idea is proof that we can accept it as true. But is it true? Or is it madness?

Why, after all, does it matter at all if China and India, who have many more people, also have larger economies than our own? Who cares? Why is it a “very real challenge that we must meet” that they are “catching up” and might “overtake” us, especially if standards of living are increasing across the board? Why should we be in a race for the largest economy? No reasons are given by Yglesias, because the actual reasons for believing this are ugly ones indeed. It ultimately amounts to a belief that United Statesians are superior to others and deserve more. Why should we be #1, rather than someone else? Because we prefer “our” people to “their” people?

Robinson continues by making the point that, although Yglesias is right the notion he is describing is totally uncontroversial, that does not mean it shouldn't be questioned:

There are many circumstances in which accepting a seemingly uncontroversial premise leads to an unacceptable implication. During the Vietnam War, the belief that “American troops should first and foremost preserve their own lives and safety” led to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians, as soldiers would, say, kill a child if they thought the child might be carrying a hand grenade. “People should have freedom of contract” and “companies should pursue their profits” can easily lead to hideous outcomes, if pursuing continued profits necessitates committing murder and lying about it. “Countries ought to prioritize their self-interest” can lead to the devaluing of the lives of people outside those countries, even though arbitrary borders should not create moral distinctions between the value of human lives. “Manifest destiny,” of course, led to the idea that it was acceptable to dispossess and murder people who stood in the way of that “destiny.” The idea that “growth is good” and that improving GDP is synonymous with improving human welfare has led to colossal destruction and misery.

Controversy

In 2013, Yglesias garnered controversy for his statements about the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse, with Yglesias arguing that the lower building standards that partially led to the factory's collapse make "economic sense" in developing countries, later tweeting that "foreign factories should be more dangerous than American factories" and "the current system of letting different countries have different rules is working fine." His comments were widely criticized in The Daily Beast, Time and other outlets, with The Guardian commenting that Yglesias is "confusing a person's human worth with their socio-economic status. That's wrong." Yglesias later clarified some of his comments, but stood by his original position.

External links

• His aptly titled blog