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Matthew Yglesias

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Matthew Yglesias
Yglesias in 2008
Born (1981-05-18) May 18, 1981 (age 44)
New York City, U.S.[1]
EducationHarvard University (BA)
Occupations
  • Blogger
  • journalist
Years active2002–present
Employers
RelativesRafael Yglesias (father)

Matthew Yglesias (/ɪˈɡleɪsiəs/; born May 18, 1981[2]) is an American blogger and journalist who writes about economics and politics.[3][4] Yglesias has written columns and articles for publications such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Slate. In 2014, he co-founded the news website Vox.

In November 2020,[5] Yglesias left his position as an editor and columnist at Vox to publish the newsletter Slow Boring. In the same month, he joined the Niskanen Center as a senior fellow.[6][7]

Early life and education

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Yglesias is the son of Rafael Yglesias, a screenwriter and novelist. His paternal grandfather, novelist Jose Yglesias, was of Cuban and Spanish Galician descent, while his paternal grandmother, the novelist Helen Yglesias (née Bassine) was the daughter of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from the Russian-controlled portion of Poland. His mother, Margaret Joskow, was a daughter of Jules Joskow, the founder of National Economic Research Associates; the economist Paul Joskow is Yglesias's uncle. His maternal grandparents were also of Eastern European Jewish descent.[8]

Yglesias went to high school at the Dalton School in New York City. He attended Harvard University, where he was editor in chief of The Harvard Independent and graduated in 2003 with a BA magna cum laude in philosophy.[9][10]

Career

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Early career

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Yglesias started blogging in early 2002, while still in college, focusing mainly on American politics and public policy issues, often approached from an abstract, philosophical perspective. Yglesias joined the American Prospect as a writing fellow upon his graduation in 2003, subsequently becoming a staff writer. His posts appeared regularly on the magazine's collaborative weblog TAPPED.[11]

From June 2007 until August 2008, Yglesias was a staff writer at The Atlantic Monthly, and his blog was hosted on the magazine's website, The Atlantic. In July 2008, he announced that he would leave The Atlantic Monthly for the Center for American Progress where he wrote for its blog, ThinkProgress, because he missed "the sense of collegiality that comes from working with like-minded colleagues on a shared enterprise" and thought he could "help advance their mission."[12] On November 21, 2011, he left ThinkProgress to work as a business and economics correspondent at Slate's Moneybox.[13][14]

Andrew Sullivan, a fellow blogger, takes nominations on his blog for the Yglesias Award, an honor "for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe."[15][16]

2014–present

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In February 2014, Yglesias left Slate and joined Vox Media to co-found Vox with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell.[17]

Yglesias authored the political nonfiction book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, released on September 15, 2020.[18] It was inspired by Doug Saunders's Maximum Canada.[19]

On November 13, 2020, Yglesias announced that he would no longer be writing for Vox.[20] Yglesias moved to the digital blogging and writing platform Substack, saying that he wanted more freedom than he had at Vox to challenge the "dominant sensibility" in the "young-college-graduate bubble", whose views, he felt, often clashed with those of "older people, and working-class people of all races and ethnicities". In relation to a former colleague at Vox, Emily St. James, who had disagreed with his signing of the Harper's Letter, Yglesias said: "It is an industry that's about ideas, and if you treat disagreement as a source of harm or personal safety, then it's very challenging to do good work."[21] The title of his Substack newsletter Slow Boring is derived from Max Weber's 1919 essay "Politics as a Vocation", describing politics as a "strong and slow boring of hard boards".[22]

In 2021, Yglesias's Twitter account was one of the most commonly followed by 150 Biden administration staff with public accounts.[23] As of 2024, Yglesias was one of the highest-earning Substack writers, reportedly earning at least $1.4 million per year.[24]

Controversy

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In 2013, after the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse, Yglesias argued against a "unified global standard for safety", writing that Bangladesh should have lower safety standards than rich countries, as the cost of higher standards is not feasible for poorer countries. He concluded: "The current system of letting different countries have different rules is working fine."[25][26][27] His comments were widely criticized in The Daily Beast,[28] Time,[29] and other outlets.[30][31] In The Guardian, Maha Rafi Atal wrote that "every worker deserves a workplace that is clean and safe, and the right to organize to protect themselves against abuses" and that Yglesias "is conflating the cost of a life with the cost of living, confusing a person's human worth with their socio-economic status".[32] Yglesias stood by his original position, but clarified that in his view the problem was a matter of enforcing existing laws rather than strengthening them.[33] He issued a correction to his original article, having referred to the building collapse as a fire.[25]

In November 2018, Yglesias tweeted about a protest outside Tucker Carlson's home: "I honestly cannot empathize with Tucker Carlson’s wife at all — I agree that protesting at her house was tactically unwise and shouldn’t be done — but I am utterly unable to identify with her plight at any level." His expressed absence of empathy toward Carlson's wife caused controversy, and he deleted his past Twitter feed.[34]

Political views

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In 2011, The Economist wrote that Yglesias espoused "left-leaning neoliberalism" in his writing.[35] In 2017, Vice listed Yglesias among a group of political writers who were labelled "neoliberal shills" in left-wing Twitter communities.[36] In 2019, Yglesias himself embraced the "chief neoliberal shill" label in The Neoliberal Podcast.[37]

In college, Yglesias initially supported the US invasion of Iraq.[38] On a personal blog, he wrote that the Arab–Israeli conflict could only be resolved by weakening Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which could be accomplished by invading Iraq, and that if other Arab governments subsequently became "outright hostile [...] we can just topple them".[39] He also advocated that the US "take out" Iran and North Korea.[40] Reflecting on this support in 2010, Yglesias identified the reasons for his "mistake" as: a "predisposition in favor of military adventurism" based on an erroneous belief that the US was "unduly constrained" in the use of force by domestic politics; trust in "elite" figures such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Tony Blair and Kenneth M. Pollack, who he thought were "credible" and whose views he "took seriously"; and discounting the possibility that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction as claimed, under the belief that the Bush administration would not "be engaged in a massive, easily-debunked-after-the-fact lie". He concluded: "Being for the war was a way to simultaneously be a free-thinking dissident in the context of a college campus and also be on the side of the country's power elite. [...] it was a series of erroneous judgments about how to think about the world and who deserves to be taken seriously and under which circumstances."[41]

In or before 2010, Yglesias coined the term "pundit's fallacy" to denote "the belief that what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively."[42][43][44] In 2012, Yglesias stated that he voted for Mitt Romney when he won the office for governor of Massachusetts in 2002.[45]

Yglesias has been a long-time supporter of the YIMBY housing movement to address the US housing crisis. Former Vox colleague Ezra Klein credited Yglesias with a "huge, singular effect" in popularizing this position.[38]

In November 2023, Yglesias argued that Israel's war in Gaza was a "just war",[46] writing that the "humanitarian disaster is an inevitable consequence of waging war in a place with the population density of Philadelphia or Chicago", but denying that Israel was "deliberately targeting a civilian population center as a means of psychological warfare".[47] In a critical response, Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson said that this was "precisely what Israel was doing",[46] pointing to reports by the Israeli +972 Magazine which said that Israel was deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in order to increase "civilian pressure" on Hamas,[48] and that it had significantly loosened its constraints on collateral civilian deaths.[49] Robinson accused Yglesias of being "condescending and smug" in his attitude toward leftists, saying: "When Yglesias writes of the 'socialist niece who posts obsessively about Genocide Joe', he is not taking seriously the possibility that this woman could be correct."[46]

In 2024, Yglesias supported Joe Biden's campaign for re-election until after the June presidential debate.[46] On July 8, Yglesias said that between Biden's March state of the union address and the debate in June, he had "misread the situation". He wrote: "Before the debate, I thought the 'Biden is too old' crowd was making the classic conspiracy theorist error of assuming a secret could be kept."[50]

In May 2025, Yglesias criticized Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) for advocating left-wing populism and calling for an end to neoliberalism. He has accused Murphy of engaging in "dog whistle moderation", i.e. implying that Democrats are too "woke" without actually saying anything anti-woke. He has argued that Murphy’s embrace of "pseudoeconomics" and targeted tariffs is exactly the wrong way to broaden the Democratic tent. He has advocated for free trade and says that it is better to celebrate cheap goods as the key to prosperity and return to the more corporate-friendly, growth-oriented approach of the Clinton and Obama eras.[51]

In August 2025, in a Twitter discussion with Matt Bruenig, Yglesias said, "Leftists don't really care about the issues they talk about, whether it's Palestine or anything else, the whole goal is to build factional power over the long term", after Bruenig said that leftists had been organizing on Palestine long before it was relevant to Democratic factional politics. Yglesias said that leftists were "idealistic young dupes" if, as Bruenig said, their long-term intention was to change US policy towards Israel. Bruenig suggested that these explanations were inconsistent.[52]

Responding to criticism from the left in September 2025, Yglesias denied failing to recognize that progressives are able to shift public opinion, and pointed to his early support for causes such as same-sex marriage and YIMBYism at a time when these positions were unpopular. He argued that the popularity of YIMBY policies among progressive leaders like Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani demonstrates the value of heterodox and critical thinking, and the importance of challenging one's ideological peers.[53]

Personal life

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Yglesias is married to Kate Crawford. Yglesias and Crawford met in 2008, and have one son together. Crawford now serves as editor of his Slow Boring newsletter.[38]

Works

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  • Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, Wiley, April 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-08622-3.[54]
  • "Long Philosophical Rant about Spider-Man 2", Ultimate blogs: masterworks from the wild Web, Editor Sarah Boxer, Random House, Inc., 2008, ISBN 978-0-307-27806-7
  • "The Media", The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program, Gene Stone, Carl Pritzkat, Tony Travostino, Random House, Inc., 2008, ISBN 978-0-8129-8036-3
  • The Rent Is Too Damn High, Simon and Schuster, March 2012, ASIN B0078XGJXO
  • One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, Portfolio Penguin, September 2020, ISBN 978-0-593-19021-0.

References

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  1. ^ "Matthew Yglesias Profile and Activity". Vox. December 29, 2021. Archived from the original on May 28, 2024. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  2. ^ Yglesias, Matthew [@mattyglesias] (April 17, 2021). "They say the nanobots take two weeks to be fully operational" (Tweet). Archived from the original on April 17, 2021 – via Twitter.
  3. ^ Reeve, Elspeth (March 22, 2013). "Matt Yglesias' $1.2 Million House Stokes Class Envy in Conservatives". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
  4. ^ Avard, Christian (July 22, 2008). "Matt Yglesias: A Case for Liberal Internationalism". The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 3, 2016.
  5. ^ Yglesias, Matthew [@mattyglesias] (November 13, 2020). "Hey folks, some personal news. Co-founding @voxdotcom with @ezraklein & @MelissaBell has been one of the great adventures of my life but after 6+ years on the job I've decided it's time for me to move on to something new that I'm really excited about" (Tweet). Archived from the original on November 13, 2020 – via Twitter.
  6. ^ "Niskanen". Niskanen Center. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  7. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (November 30, 2022). "I'm a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center". www.slowboring.com. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  8. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (May 22, 2012). "The Myth of Majority-Minority America". Slate. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
  9. ^ "Matt Yglesias Bio". TheAtlantic.com. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
  10. ^ "About Matthew Yglesias". Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  11. ^ Hantschel, Allison, ed. (2005). Special Plans: The Blogs on Douglas Feith & the Faulty Intelligence That Led to War. Franklin, Beedle & Associates, Inc. ISBN 978-1-59028-049-2.
  12. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (July 16, 2008). "Big Think Tank Matt". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020.
  13. ^ Stoeffel, Kat (November 10, 2011). "Matthew Yglesias Moves to Slate". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2011.
  14. ^ "Matthew Yglesias". Slate. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2011.
  15. ^ Sullivan, Andrew. "The Daily Dish Awards". The Daily Dish. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on February 11, 2007. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  16. ^ Sullivan, Andrew (January 22, 2021). "Biden's Culture War Aggression". The Weekly Dish. Substack. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  17. ^ Klein, Ezra (January 26, 2014). "Vox is our next". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 20, 2017. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  18. ^ "One Billion Americans". One Billion Americans. July 19, 2020. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  19. ^ Saunders, Doug (September 11, 2020). "Imagine a world with a billion Americans in it. No, really". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
  20. ^ "The Weeds Podcast". Vox. Archived from the original on January 15, 2020. Retrieved November 13, 2020.
  21. ^ Friedersdorf, Conor (November 13, 2020). "Why Matthew Yglesias Left Vox". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 13, 2020.
  22. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (November 13, 2020). "Welcome to Slow Boring". Slow Boring. Substack. Retrieved October 18, 2025.
  23. ^ Thompson, Alex; Meyer, Theodoric (January 20, 2021). "Biden 'is planning to run again' in 2024". POLITICO. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  24. ^ Staff, A. O. L. (October 2, 2024). "You probably can't make more than $1 million a year on Substack. But Matthew Yglesias does". www.aol.com. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  25. ^ a b Yglesias, Matthew (April 24, 2013). "Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That's OK". Slate. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  26. ^ Beyerstein, Lindsay (April 13, 2013). "No, Matt Yglesias, Bangladeshi Workers Didn't Choose To Be Crushed To Death". In These Times. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  27. ^ Robin, Corey (April 25, 2013). "Would It Not Be Easier for Matt Yglesias to Dissolve the Bangladeshi People and Elect Another?". Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  28. ^ McArdle, Megan (April 21, 2017) [2013-04-30]. "Should We Force Other Countries to Be Safe?". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  29. ^ Walsh, Bryan (April 29, 2013). "Fast, Cheap, Dead: Shopping and the Bangladesh Factory Collapse". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  30. ^ "Different Places Have Different Safety Rules So It's Okay If Poor, Brown People Die". The Aerogram. April 25, 2013. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  31. ^ "Fast, Cheap, Dead: Shopping and the Bangladesh Factory Collapse (Time)". Center For Global Development. May 6, 2013. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  32. ^ Maha Rafi Atal (April 29, 2013). "The Bangladesh factory tragedy and the moralists of sweatshop economics". The Guardian. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  33. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (April 26, 2013). "Some Further Thoughts on Bangladesh". Slate. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  34. ^ Prengel, Kate (November 8, 2018). "Matty Yglesias Has Deleted His Entire Twitter Feed". Heavy.com. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved April 29, 2019.
  35. ^ W., W. (July 18, 2011). "Everything falls apart". The Economist. Iowa City. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  36. ^ Peyser, Eve (July 20, 2017). "Everyone Hates Neoliberals, So We Talked to Some". Vice. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  37. ^ "Chief Neoliberal Shill ft. Matt Yglesias", The Neoliberal Podcast, May 8, 2019, retrieved March 15, 2022
  38. ^ a b c Zak, Dan (January 11, 2023). "The Boring Journey of Matt Yglesias". Washington Post. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  39. ^ "Matthew Yglesias". Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020. The only way a negotiated settlement will be possible there is if Arafat feels that his position is weakening. The only way for that to happen is for the other Arab leaders to start becoming less supportive of him. The only way for that to happen is for our Arab "allies" to recognize that US-Saudi, US-Egyptian, US-Qatari, etc. relations are two way streets, not just an endless dialogue about what we need to do to prop up their regimes. What better way to show that than to go do something they really, really don't want us to do like, say, invade Iraq? Plus, if we invade Iraq, we can create at least one reasonable regime in the area. If some "moderate" government get toppled (or just become outright hostile) as the worriers always worry, then we can just topple them again and set up some more supportive regimes.
  40. ^ "HYPER-HAWKISH TNR EDITORIAL". Blogspot. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
  41. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (August 19, 2010). "Four Reasons for a Mistake". ThinkProgress. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  42. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (August 2, 2010). "The Pundit's Fallacy". ThinkProgress (blog). Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  43. ^ W., W. (May 1, 2012). "This week in the pundit's fallacy". The Economist. Iowa City. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  44. ^ Krugman, Paul (May 24, 2012). "How to End This Depression". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  45. ^ Yglesias, Matthew [@Mattyglesias] (August 31, 2012). "My recollection is that pre-Romney MA was pretty good, and I voted for him to maintain the status quo. Which he did!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on July 18, 2013. Retrieved September 1, 2012 – via Twitter.
  46. ^ a b c d Robinson, Nathan J. (December 3, 2024). "Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything". Current Affairs. ISSN 2471-2647. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  47. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (November 2, 2023). "Israel's two wars". www.slowboring.com. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  48. ^ Bennett, Geoff; Sagalyn, Dan; Warsi, Zeba (December 11, 2023). "Israel targets infrastructure in Gaza to ramp up civilian pressure on Hamas, report claims". PBS News. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  49. ^ Reiff, Ben (November 30, 2023). "'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza". +972 Magazine. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  50. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (July 8, 2024). "I was wrong about Biden". www.slowboring.com. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
  51. ^ Edelman, Gilad (June 24, 2025). "What Chris Murphy Learned From the New Right". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 25, 2025.
  52. ^ Savage, Luke (August 20, 2025). "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Matt Yglesias". www.lukewsavage.com. Retrieved August 26, 2025.
  53. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (September 3, 2025). "I've been right about some things". Slow Boring. Retrieved November 6, 2025.
  54. ^ Wiley product page for Heads in the Sand Archived January 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
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