Top all-time · #286
Matthew Yglesias
Personal blog · slowboring.compoliticseconomics
Matthew Yglesias writes Slow Boring, a personal blog at slowboring.com about politics and economics. Since 2020, 174 different Hacker News readers have linked it 383 times, most often “We could have universal Covid vaccines soon”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Start your day with pragmatic takes on politics and public policy. Click to read Slow Boring, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- We could have universal Covid vaccines soon7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-07-07
- Homelessness is about housing6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-07-20
- Why are young liberals so depressed?6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-03-01
- The media's lab leak fiasco5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-05-26
- The “induced demand“ case against YIMBYism is wrong4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-01-28
- The "Deaths of Despair" narrative is wrong4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-10
- The Techno-Optimist's Fallacy4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-23
- Online sports betting hurts consumers4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-10
- Understanding Effective Altruism’s move into politics3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-23
- The rise and importance of Secret Congress3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-07-29
What Hacker News says?
Trump won the popular vote. So it seems you have two options: 1. Convince yourself that the majority of the country are in the "cult of MAGA" and that you will never win their votes. With this option Democrats will never win the Presidency again - in fact, Democrats can simplify all our lives and simply stop competing in Presidential elections! There's no point - the majority are in the "cult of MAGA" so Democrats c…
Comment linking /p/a-tale-of-two-machines
on “Trump wins presidency for second time”Submitted The case for banning non-competes as a story · 511 points
HN discussionThis is not at all what happened. This article has a good overview of the shifting narrative. The initial position was that it was crazy to even consider a lab leak. https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco
Comment linking /p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco
on “The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins”Submitted The media's lab leak fiasco as a story · 501 points
HN discussionHah, we already have those medicals in Hungary. Well, it definitely has some cash-grabby aspects, but - at least here - there's some real benefits to having a doctor think at least for 2 seconds about how someone's chronic conditions can and will affect them (and others!) on the roads. People are getting glasses because the doctor told them that they need them for driving. People are getting regular blood sugar chec…
Comment linking /p/a-boring-theory-of-the-populist-right
on “Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws”Submitted I’m not convinced by the new lab leak debunking as a story · 358 points
HN discussionIf the government "prints" money and immediately distributes it uniformly to the population, it benefits the poor most of all. Especially debtors. This year was a great example. Mortgage refinancing bonanza. If inflation really takes hold, those debtors will be very happy. > And that’s not a “rich get richer” kind of thing — the poverty rate fell. And it’s no surprise. Peter Ganong, Pacal Noel, and Joseph Vavra foun…
Comment linking /p/the-cares-superdole-was-a-huge-success
on “Bitcoin is a disaster”Submitted The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation as a story · 247 points
HN discussionNot just asset prices. https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-cares-superdole-was-a-huge-...
Comment linking /p/the-cares-superdole-was-a-huge-success
on “Bitcoin is a disaster”Submitted American trains need more than railfan nostalgia as a story · 136 points
HN discussionCanadian and Mexican egg prices haven’t budged because they vaccinate their chickens [1]. I’m not a fan of factory farming. But this isn’t a story about that. It’s a story about American (a) producers favouring cheap production by avoiding the cost of vaccination and (b) regulators favouring a policy of trade protectionism that keeps our neighbours’ cheap eggs off our grocery-store shelves. [1] https://www.slowborin…
Comment linking /p/the-case-for-vaccinating-chickens
on “Eggs US – Price – Chart”Submitted The case against crisis-mongering as a story · 135 points
HN discussion> Canadian egg producers have smaller and spread out farms preventing disease spread Canadian and Mexican egg producers vaccinate their chickens [1]. This isn’t a story about industrial farming. It’s about animal vaccine requirements and trade protectionism banning Canadian and Mexican eggs from the American supply chain. [1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-for-vaccinating-chicke...
Comment linking /p/the-case-for-vaccinating-chickens
on “Eggs US – Price – Chart”Submitted America needs supply-side reform as a story · 133 points
HN discussion“H5N1 has not been spiking the Mexican chicken industry because Mexico vaccinates its birds. This has a certain up-front cost, but it also means they don’t need to do flock-wide cullings any time a bird tests positive” [1]. I don’t think we need to vaccinate all our chickens. But we clearly need to vaccinate a resilient core to stabilise egg prices. (The author also said “Americans in border states were driving to M…
Comment linking /p/the-case-for-vaccinating-chickens
on “Eggs US – Price – Chart”Submitted In defense of interesting writing on controversial topics as a story · 125 points
HN discussion> So, progressive groups support minorities, and then promote minorities with progressive opinions Progressives promote minorities with progressive opinions and pass those progressive opinions off as representative of those minority groups. White progressives self-consciously wear that label; non-white progressives invoke their ethnic identity without the progressive qualifier. Progressives in media, academia, and p…
Comment linking /p/yang-gang?s=r
on “Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken”Submitted We could have universal Covid vaccines soon as a story · 114 points
HN discussionHN is also social media :) but let's say friends sending links to group chats (or through direct messages) and you open it, and uh you see you got messages from other people on Instagram, or on Facebook you see that someone had a baby/wedding/whatever, and ... also I see that people install these limiter apps on their phones, and then just override them many times a day. and of course if every few days you spend 30…
Comment linking /p/from-bowling-alone-to-scrolling-alone
on “Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children”Submitted Homelessness is about housing as a story · 93 points
HN discussion> Hey. I am sure you know a lot more about this than I do, but just to let you know, your comment comes off as sort of petty and ill-motivated. That's fair--I was trying to avoid a lengthy rant. > But then that's not the only leap you make. It's not just taken as obvious that AAJC is an anti-Asian organization, and everyone knows that, and no one could think differently: it's also taken as an obvious conclusion that…
Comment linking /p/yang-gang?s=r
on “Elon Musk owns 9.2% of Twitter”Submitted American poverty is too high for all kinds of people as a story · 92 points
HN discussionI'm the "other" kind of brown: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings... The seemingly higher rate for hispanics disappears when you adjust for the fact that the median hispanic is 28 and the median white person is 42. (The odds of being shot by the police drop sharply after 35.) Similarly, Latino incarceration rates have dropped below white incarceration rates: https://www.slowboring.com/p/his…
Comment linking /p/hispanic-prison
on “How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?”Submitted Privacy concerns are breaking the Census as a story · 79 points
HN discussion“Systemic racism” is itself a woke term that misleadingly imputes prejudice and intent onto basically economic factors. As a brown guy in America, I can expect to make more money, and my kids will have higher income mobility even if I came here in poverty, than whites. I have half the chance of being shot by the police and a third the risk of being incarcerated than white people. I can expect to live longer as a bro…
Comment linking /p/hispanic-prison
on “How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?”Submitted Human history in the very long run (2021) as a story · 74 points
HN discussion> What about the savings https://doge.gov/savings ? Are they a bad thing? Cost versus value. E.g, what kind of soft power did the US lose when they shredded USAID? What kinds of medical research will not be done because of cuts to NIH: * https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nih-layoffs-budget-cuts-medical... What kind of tax revenue will be lost because the IRS is even more short-staffed and cannot investigate fraud: * http…
Comment linking /p/yes-doge-failed-and-it-matters
on “The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers”Submitted Free markets are creating a major free speech problem as a story · 57 points
HN discussionPretty much. https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
Comment linking /p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco
on “Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths”Submitted YIMBYism as Industrial Policy as a story · 45 points
HN discussion
