Hi there, I’m Eric Levitz!
I’ve been writing about politics and the economy for more than a decade at Vox and New York magazine.
I’ve spent much of my career analyzing day-to-day developments in American political life — which, over the past 10 years, have been a bit too interesting. But in my favorite pieces, I try to view current events from far overhead, examining the broader historical and intellectual forces that brought us here — and, on occasion, speculating about where they will take us next.
In “The most likely AI apocalypse,” I explored the question: If AI’s capabilities keep progressing — and robots start outperforming humans at most economically valuable tasks — what will happen to the social contract? If elites cease to depend on ordinary workers’ labor, will they establish a permanent oligarchy?
I explored a more immediate concern about how technological progress is changing our society in “Is the decline of reading poisoning American politics?” There, I dug into evidence that digital media is eroding “deep literacy” and undermining (small-L) liberalism in the process.
I often find it interesting to wrestle with ideologies I disagree with — particularly when they are a bit eccentric. To that end, in 2024, I reviewed a pair of works by “reactionary feminists” — women who insist that modern liberalism has has served most women poorly, condemning them to a sexually exploitative dating market, alienating them from their own bodies, and exacerbating their caregiving burdens by promoting social atomization and male irresponsibility.
More recently, I wrote about the idea that the ideological spectrum is a fiction — that “progressivism” and “conservatism” don’t name enduring philosophies of government, so much as ever-shifting rationalizations for the interests of rival alliances.
Finally, last year, I argued that Donald Trump’s trade wars are animated by a widely felt — but irrational — nostalgia for the mid-20th century economy.
