What Noah Smith thinks about America
Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.
Noah Smith did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Only Noah Smith on America. See everyone on America
46 dated positions, 2024 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Noah Smith has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsThe modern American Right will fail because it's a movement designed to splinter and shrink and infight.
- 3 days earlier
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Our readingAmericans are largely unaware that they are ruled by people who are obsessed with Europe.
Their wordsAmericans barely realize that they're ruled by people who are absolutely obsessed with Europe
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsBut whatever the correct numbers are, the basic point remains the same: AI is now one of the two biggest infrastructure booms in American history, by a large margin.
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Our readingAmerica is intentionally cutting itself off from the other global technological revolution.
Their wordsAmerica is intentionally cutting ourselves off from the other global technological revolution.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsunder Trump, the U.S. has switched our alliance from Europe to Russia
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsEverything bad in American society, culture, and politics is partly a Russian op
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsThroughout most of the 2010s, there was a popular notion that society should basically ignore and shun people like that, and that if we all simply shunned them, and pressured our friends and colleagues to shun them, they and their views would vanish from American society — or at least remain marginalized. That approach failed.
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Their wordsBut if we are going to flourish as a nation, the project of creating an American ethnicity is essential.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsRightists are not interested in *reforming* the immigration system. Sure, they'd love to halt all immigration. But really, what they're interested in is targeting immigrants, in order to prove that they still have the power to exclude someone from American society.
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Their wordsAmerican children's entertainment is movies and TV, and it emphasizes hard work and practice.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsPaul Krugman says of AI: "This is a technology of, by and for oligarchs, with hardly any of the benefits trickling down to regular Americans." He is wrong.
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Their wordsAI has plenty of issues, but it also creates plenty of benefits for regular Americans: 1. Huge consumer surplus (people love using chatbots) 2. Lots of construction jobs 3. Property tax revenue 4. Supporting the whole macroeconomy
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Their wordsThere are a lot of Nazis in America now, but as a percent of the population they're still tiny
- 2 days earlier
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Our readingAmerica's power is not collapsing
Their wordsI can’t rule out the possibility that someday we’ll all look back on Trump’s second presidency as a success.
↗The second Trump presidency is a world-historic failurenoahpinion.blog
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Their wordsRightists will scream "Colorblind meritocracy!" right up until the point where Indian people start doing well, at which point every rightist turns into Ibram Kendi
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Their wordsTrump has done lots of things to make inflation worse in his second term: 1. Tariffs 2. Massive deficits that he says we can "pay back" with inflation 3. The Iran War
- 1 day earlier
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Our readingRent in America is becoming more affordable
Their wordsBelieve it or not, rent in America is now getting more affordable.
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Their wordsChinamaxxers are tourists who visit Chinese malls on their American salaries, write gushingly about how amazing everything in China is, and then fly back to their suburban American McMansions
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsA lot of regular Republican voters are conservatives who want nothing to do with MAGA's little bumbling klepto-fascist putsch.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsAs I wrote in a post two years ago — still one of my most popular posts of all time — land acknowledgements don’t just recognize Indigenous people. They are a way of fundamentally delegitimizing the United States — of declaring that this is a country that has no right to exist. And beyond that, land acknowledgements implicitly advance a theory of collective racial ownership of territory that is morally indistinguishable from the worst blood-and-soil nationalism of the racist far Right.
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Their wordsAmericans hate AI because the last wave of technology -- the social-mobile age -- went badly for them.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsNot many people ride Bay Area trains and buses, primarily because of the public disorder.
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Their wordsThose who do rarely pay fares, so transit operates as a charity.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsThe United States is simply too internally divided to engage in the sort of far-seeing, purposeful, smart kind of international competition that we pursued so effectively in the 20th century.
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Their wordsHe has willfully degraded or torn up America’s key alliances, especially with Europe, and created enmity where friendship once reigned.
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Their wordsTrump has thus forfeited America’s claim to moral superiority over China.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsThere are too many Americans who have convinced themselves that their reason for living in America is to overthrow it from within. We should simply ridicule and socially exclude those people until they move out.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsMost importantly, they see the world in terms of collective zero-sum competition between groups. To the New Right, if Indians get into the University of Texas, it means that White people must have been “replaced” at that university — or at American universities in general.
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Their wordsThe anti-Indian idiots have really convinced themselves that Indians are a bunch of dumdums despite out-earning every other ethnic group in the country.
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Their wordsAround the time liberalism gave way to "progressivism", people on the left started being wrong about a ton of stuff. Back in 2010, Democrats were right about maybe 85% of things. Now it's like...30%? With Republicans at maybe 15%?
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsI think there aren't many Indians in America right now, and I would like to bring in a lot more 🙋
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThe white supermajority could be restored if you could get Republicans to simply reclassify Hispanics as "white", like they did for Italians once upon a time
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solarChinaclimate changebatteries
Their wordsChina scaled solar and batteries when America refused to, because the CCP got scared of climate change.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsBut overall, the era of heavy U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a disaster for U.S. power and prestige, and it’s time for that era to end.
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Their wordsWhat the United States needs, now more than ever, is general disengagement from the Middle East — an end to military adventures, a dialing back of support for Middle Eastern “allies” (including Israel), and a forceful rejection of Middle Eastern issues in American domestic politics.
- 3 days earlier
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Our readingThe purpose of immigration is to benefit the people who already live in the receiving country.
Their wordsA third principle that liberals should embrace is that the purpose of immigration is to benefit the people who already live in the country that is receiving the immigrants. Immigration to America must be for the benefit of Americans.
↗Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigrationnoahpinion.blog
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Our readingIf America gives up immigration, it will lose one of the key things that has made it great.
Their wordsBut speaking only for my own country, I believe that if America gives up immigration, it will lose one of the key things that has made it great.
↗Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigrationnoahpinion.blog
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Their wordsimmigration strengthens America CULTURALLY, not just economically
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Their wordsmany immigrants are the type of people who built America and who keep it strong and dynamic
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsIf either country opens up a large, sustained lead in AI capabilities, it might upend the balance of power between the two.
↗America is still beating China in the AI racenoahpinion.blog
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Their wordsBut given the Chinese Communist Party’s power-seeking nature, it seems much more likely that China would agree to cooperate on AI safety if U.S. capabilities were comfortably ahead.
↗America is still beating China in the AI racenoahpinion.blog
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsThe electric revolution is the first major technological revolution that America has just completely whiffed on.
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsI believe that the MAGA movement is simply one of America’s periodic nativist backlashes, like the Know-Nothings in the 1850s or the restrictionists of the 1910s.
↗Yes, assimilation is goodnoahpinion.blog 6th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsIt’s a normal healthy process, and everyone should accept it; it’s part of the deal when you move to America.
↗Yes, assimilation is goodnoahpinion.blog 7th of 7 in this piece
- 8 months earlier
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Their wordsThe first of the two charts shows that institutional buyers — which includes private equity, BlackRock, etc. — own only a tiny sliver of the homes in America.
↗Corporations aren't the reason your rent is too highnoahpinion.blog
- 9 months earlier
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Their wordsBut if the American people have decreed that a person should not get in, they should not get in.
↗On immigration, what Americans want is democratic controlnoahpinion.blog 2nd of 2 in this piece