If you are like me – a political dork that spends too much time on X – you could not escape the discussion of a new book called Abundance.
Written by Derek Thompson of the Atlantic and Ezra Klein of the New York Times (also co-founder of Vox), Abundance is one of those politicians with a great idea on which everyone must have an opinion – whether or not they have read it.
In AbundanceThe great idea of Thompson and Klein is that American politics and life in the past 50 years have been distorted by an “rarity ideology” which has artificially reduced The supply of vital goods such as housing and energy thanks to an increasing fur of restrictions and government regulations. They argue to adopt an abundance policy that encourages construction and innovation and unlocks American prosperity, aimed at a “more” rather than “less” for everyone.
Thompson and Klein are self-identified liberals, and their book is mainly intended to diagnose what they have seen badly with democratic governance in recent decades, because progressives have consciously adopted policies that aim to limit growth. They point out Democratic cities like San Francisco or New York, where regulations have practically made the construction of new living spaces, putting the cost of housing out of reach for more and more people.
Even on questions that are deeply careful about the Democrats, such as climate change, their policies have inadvertently had the effect of slowing down progress By making it difficult to build the large quantity of clean energy necessary to reduce carbon emissions without harming the economy.
The result was that even if technological progress continued, we have stopped feeling it and we have stopped appreciating it – a coherent theme of this newsletter. Instead, little by little, and often with the best intentions, we have put countless invisible brakes on development, with the net profit that we have reduced the offer and increased the price of the goods we needed for a good life. And once we have lost the ability to build physically, we have lost the ability to build a better future.
Abundance is not only for Democrats
Given how many Abundance Focusing on the place where the Democrats went wrong, the book sparked the debate among the progressives. If you want to know more about it, but you don’t want to get lost in endless post threads or three -hour podcasts, my colleague Vox Eric Levitz has a great song on the arguments and why the Democrats should take into account the message of Abundance.
But it’s a mistake to think of Abundance As a book that has a meaning only for readers who vote blue. In his heart is a message that counts for Americans from all political backgrounds: we don’t have to fight endlessly on who gets which piece of narrow pie. For too long, we have been convinced that we have to treat American life as a zero -sum game, but we can change the rules. We can adopt policies that actively increase this pie – policies that make accommodation more affordable in places that people want to live, which give us energy to fuel high -tech economics without burning the planet, which brings us better health care at lower costs.
Thompson and Klein recognize that Americans will never agree on everything, that there are problems where there are simply fundamental differences between the right and the left. But they are right to say that most Americans I want a better life For themselves and their children, and that a policy has focused on improving material progress in the fields that matter – housing, education, energy – is the one that can appeal to almost everyone. As Thompson wrote In the Atlantic this week, abundance can “combine the progressive virtue of care for the working class and a traditionally conservative celebration of national greatness”.
If we can do it, we could be able to break the polarization This has been the subject of progress and transformed American policy into a winning death match.
I am sure that all those who read Abundance will agree with each page. The diagnosis of errors that have retained progress is much easier than creating a political movement that can unlock it. But I believe that there is hunger in this country for a vision of the future which is not intrinsically frightening, which takes up something of optimism which was once synonymous with America. It gives me hope at a time when we desperately need it.
A version of this story originally appeared in The Good Newsletter. Register here!