Matthew Yglesias Quotes

A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture.

In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised.

The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me.

It's rare that you have a policy issue that can be solved by throwing more money at the problem, but the technology to make bus service more frequent and equip buses with GPS systems that provide real-time schedule updates to bus stops exists and operates in many parts of the world. We should be installing it in our major cities.

The United States Postal Service has a problem. People aren't sending as much mail as they used to. That means less postage revenue and difficulty paying the bills.

A normal recession disrupts people's lives, but a long recession destroys them. You lose output, prosperity, family stability, self-esteem, and many other qualities on what looks to be a semi-permanent basis.

Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.