Matt Miller

Author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. Senior fellow, Center for American Progress.

Leading political and business thinker.
New ways to unleash a new prosperity.





Named one of journalism’s "most original thinkers" by The McLaughlin Group, Matt Miller brings agenda-setting ideas and creative, practical solutions to America’s most urgent social and political concerns. He is the author of two books.

The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity warns about old ideas that are holding us back and identifies new ways of thinking that are controversial today but are destined to shape our business lives and political lives in the future.

His previous book, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, was The 2% Solution: Fixing America’s Problems In Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love. The 2% Solution offered eminently practical solutions for the crisis of imagination that often plagues discussions of American domestic policy.

Matt Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an award-winning contributor toThe New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Fortune and other national magazines. Matt writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and hosts public radio's popular week-in-review program Left, Right & Center, and is a consultant to corporations, governments and nonprofits. He is also a guest host on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Matt has a gift for astute observations and a lively, humorous style that appeals to a broad range of audiences. He is an excellent event and panel moderator.

The Tyranny of Dead Ideas

A preview of "tomorrow's destined ideas"—ideas that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives.

The greatest threat to our economic future: the things we think we know—but don't.

America is at a crossroads. In the face of global competition, rapid technological change, and recurring financial crisis, our economy is about to face its most severe test in nearly a century. Yet our leaders have failed to prepare us for what lies ahead because they are in the grip of a set of "dead ideas" about how a modern economy should work. They wrongly believe that

• our kids will earn more than we do
• free trade is always good, no matter who gets hurt
• employers should be responsible for health coverage
• taxes hurt the economy
• schools are a local matter
• money follows merit

These ways of thinking—dubious at best and often dead wrong—are on a collision course with economic developments that are irreversible. Only by breaking the tyranny of dead ideas can we move beyond the limits of today's obsolete debates and reinvent American capitalism and democracy for the twenty-first century.

Strategic Advisor

Matt is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, advising on projects in the firm’s health care, public sector, nonprofit and related practices, and to the McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey’s in-house economics think-tank.

He served as Senior Advisor to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and was a White House Fellow, serving as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Matt is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Screen Actors Guild (thanks to a cameo appearance in the thriller, The Siege).

Credentials

• Columnist, The Washington Post
• Author, The 2% Solution and The Tyranny of Dead Ideas
• Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
• Member, Council on Foreign Relations
• Member, Pacific Council on International Policy
• Member, Screen Actors Guild (cameo in The Siege)
• Former columnist, Fortune magazine
• Former Senior Advisor, OMB
• Former White House Fellow
• Law degree, Columbia Law School; James Kent Scholar

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