Abundance

Abundance is a leaf non-fiction book about politics and policy.

Thesis

“To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need”

Quote

Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it.

• Right wing pushes supply side, left wing pushes demand side economics.
• An uncanny economy where the material trappings of a middle class+ life are present but the actual life is unaffordable. “In the 1960s, it was possible to attend a four-year college debt-free but impossible to purchase a flat-screen television. By the 2020s, the reality was close to the reverse.”
• Economic growth spurs change.
  • Change has slowed at the conclusion of the 20th century.
• The market cannot, on its own, distinguish between the riches that flow from burning coal and the wealth that is created by bettering battery storage. Government can. The market will not, on its own, fund the risky technologies whose payoff is social rather than economic. Government must.
  • Fundamentally this articulates the tension between markets vs. externalized costs vs. governments
  • Moreover, where has the major innovations of the 20th century come from (nuclear power, internet, etc.) come from? Government programs. A notable exception is AI, where the breakthroughs around LLMs came from private industry.
  • Cities HCOL prevents social mobility: people who can live in cities are more likely to be exposed to innovation and high salaried jobs. HCOL prevents lower income workers from living in the city and therefore there children are less exposed to this environment and therefore less mobile.
• Fixed rate mortgages are peculiar, they should be extremely risky due to their horizon and ubiquity. However, they are backed by Federal Government and given favorable tax status.
  • A fixed rate mortgage holds payments flat against an appreciating asset. Inflation eats away at the real payment value while the asset appreciates.
• Environmentalism took off between 1966 and 1973, spawning almost a dozen federal laws to curb big government building.
• Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors of Mono County was a landmark case in California because it used the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to bind a private developer to the environmental regulations of the law intended to bind government builds.
  • These types of environmental regulations and impact reports were used to block housing.
• Anti-growth politics ultimately becomes a misanthropy directed at new comers. Supply-side economics

What do you do about goods that the market could or would not produce on its own?

Demand economics

Left wing pushes demand through subsidies (health care, food, etc.) for the poor that they otherwise could not afford. The theory might be that when you create enough the demand the market will respond by providing more supply. Unfortunately this runs a foul when the supply is scarce (see housing). Demand only raises price and converts the good into a rationed product.

Liberal Cites acting conservatively

• Liberal cities are symbolically liberal, but often govern conservatively, using regulation and zoning to prevent housing builds, increasing inequality and curbing growth.

Cite

Klein, E. & Thompson, D. Abundance. (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2025)

Metadata

Title:: Abundance Year:: 2025 Publisher:: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Abstract

“A terrific book…Powerful and persuasive.” —Fareed Zakaria “Spectacular…Offers a comprehensive indictment of the current problems and a clear path forward…Klein and Thompson usher in a mood shift. They inspire hope and enlarge the imagination.” —David Brooks, The New York Times From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough. Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished. Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel. .