The hotly-debated new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is a grand sketch of liberalism's future that fails to reach beyond the lean horizons of its present
Your description of what freedom means -- or ought to mean -- was bracing and is rarely heard in these parts.
Americans struggle to give it that abundantly (yes, indeed!) generous definition. The stirring tones of the Proclamation of Emancipation could have been a start and FDR's Four Freedoms did hint at a guarantee of something more than mere subsistence but the effort stalls soon after that. We look back at what Gary Gerstle calls the New Deal Order with fondness, a type of Fordism on a national scale for the country's white population. Even so, we tell ourselves, it was far better than the Social Darwinist alternatives from the Gilded Age that reactionaries like Robert Taft and Fred Hartley wanted us to return to. Yet it was just a matter of time before the dismantlers would succeed and they made their first move with the 1973 Powell Memo, still worth reading as the guiding spirit for today's Project 2025.
As you point out in your review essay, but in a too circumlocutionary way, this book is In the spirit of Gerstle. Klein and Thompson -- with their fellow travelers, Noah Smith and Matt Ygelsisas -- want to claim the mantle of that New Deal Order but substantially reworked and without a jot of the redistributionist and regulatory force of the original program. In fact, they would happily identify with deregulatory zeal of the current Gilded Age for large swathes of the economy.
Their vision then amounts to this: "efficient" delivery of "public goods" that increases the "productivity" of the economy. (Quotation marks only to emphasize their touchstones.) From this, we get the non-zero sum game. Workers receive cheaper and better housing, child care, health care, education, social insurance, etc., thanks to government investment while the private-sector gets highly productive and economically secure labor input and can count on high growth to sustain their drive for profits.
This not how capitalism works, or has ever worked. The primeval drive for profits is maximal and all-consuming. Michael Kalecki told us, capitalism needs -- even requires -- the insecurity of workers to survive. Private capital in a market economy is savage, predatory and will use politics, the law, technological innovation, whatever, to suck the marrow of economic value to usurp for itself. It must necessarily be shackled.
Your conclusion was right on the mark. The book is another artful attempt to salvage the discredited belief system known as neoliberalism. Lipstick on a pick? Quite possibly.
It’s always like this, more or less w Ezra Klein: he gives an extremely insulated ideological take that he’s convinced is not ideological (bc as a liberal wonk, he thinks ideology is a pejorative). So the thinking never gets outside of that neoliberal box. I mean: there cannot be abundance in capitalism and the (corporate captured) state is inefficient in regulating it—by design, right? How is that not a premise the book must deal with? This is exactly why Bernie is not the Trump of the left, I mean? As an average person it’s a particularly exhausting experience, watching this kind of political immaturity pass for the latest “innovation.”
It's a bizzare book. It's a books about production but without any political economy or industrial policy. It's enemies are what the 10 antigrowthers, NIMBY's as this massive organised class and the housing asset economy which they want to devalue (I think?). It isn't really about California, it's about San Franciso.
Calling it 220 pages long is generous, it's maybe 110 without footnotes.
The arguments brought forth by Klein and Thompson about zoning and housing are particularly grating because the examples they give, like Houston building more houses than say NYC or LA or so on, don't actually investigate the reality and facts on the ground. Namely, ask a Houston resident or an expert in Houston housing about the quality of the housing built or the actual reasons why it's built (which had to do with tech companies, especially major semiconductor companies like Nvidia, AMD, Intel, etc. moving into places like Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, etc.), and the reality that they convey is dismal and critical. Funny how that never gets explored in Abundance.
Probably because it would debunk part of it's premise in regards to zoning.
And again and again, Klein and Thompson try to nuance monger to obfuscate and confuse, especially in the critical idea of how moneyed interests play a very critical role in why zoning and construction and housing and healthcare so much more is so expensive and ineffective, which the Abundance duo very pointedly don't really acknowledge or grapple with or at the very least, dance around and obfuscate around. Instead Klein instead blames environmentalists for the reason why regulations strangle development in housing and public transit and so on. How curious that centrist liberal types like Klein and so on, that their critiques are always aimed at those beside or below them but NEVER above.
Like the idea that Klein brought up about how NIMBYs and real estate developers are two types of moneyed interests with competing interests so "moneyed interests" can't be the overarching problem of why things can't be built in America and of restrictive zoning policies
In regards to conversations of affordable housing, NIMBYs and real estate developers aren't really in conflict with each other as the problem is that developers never really build affordable housing because where's the money in that? Instead, they build luxury apartment buildings with whatever legally mandated affordable apartments baked into the center while the majority of the luxury apartments are bought and sold to use as mostly investment vehicles, not actual places of living. Why bother renting these apartments when you can sell them for the equivalent price of 100 months worth of rent all at once? This is a common problem in urban development and why urbanists are critical of it. Just because NIMBYs and real estate develops seemingly clash when it comes to money-power is not as what it seems on the surface. They ultimately have the same money-power interest which does not include truly affordable housing. Instead it's always public-private partnerships that give public money to subsidize private development with little to no strings or oversight.
There's also the Faircloth Amendment, lobbied by real estate developers, NIMBYs, and so many other moneyed interests which restricts the construction of public housing units that can be built and operated. To quote the National Coalition For The Homeless from their page about it which explains thr Faircloth Amendment,
"In 1998, through the Faircloth Amendment, the U.S. Government created an artificial barrier by limiting the number of public housing units that federal authorities could build and has resulted in many people being left without a home. This amendment prevents any net increase in public housing stock from the number of units as of October 1, 1999. Simply put, the Faircloth Amendment sets a cap on the number of units any public housing authority (PHA) could own and operate, effectively halting new construction of public housing. This prevents policymakers from using a vital tool, building more permanent affordable housing, to address our nation’s growing housing and homelessness crisis."
"In the two decades since the Faircloth Amendment passed, rent costs have skyrocketed while average incomes have not. The median inflation-adjusted rent has increased 13.0 percent since 2001, while the median inflation-adjusted renter’s income has only increased 0.5 percent during that same period. This obstacle in creating more affordable housing that the amendment created, is happening while there is a $70 billion backlog in funding for maintenance and repairs to existing public housing stock."
Thank you for doing the work here. From the brief bit I'd heard or picked up about Abundance, I was assuming it was simply neoliberalism rebranded and it's nice to have that confirmed.
I don’t even disagree with many of the Abundance Agenda policy proposals--I'm all for making the government less bureaucratic (like removing means-testing and making social programs universal) and for making government services more consumer-friendly. But this scans as a déjà vu rebrand of Elizabeth Warren’s "I Have a Plan." It's policy without the politics, and it seems like this class of pundits either don't get power, or willfully obfuscate it. The government is inefficient and poorly regulates industries because both parties have a vested interest in keeping it dysfunctional, because it gives their donors the political ammo to privatize public services while maintaining record-high profits.
Housing would be a great example of them conflating the symptom with the disease. Sure, zoning is outdated, and building regulations are cumbersome, and we should increase urban density and prioritize 15-minute neighborhoods. But why is our housing in this state? My hunch is that it's because housing is financialized, which turns the main goal of housing into making it a vector of profit rather than sheltering the most amount of people. This profoundly warps incentives. Anything to increase housing supply will decrease the value of existing housing, so NIMBYs, BlackRock, HOAs, or whatever interest that benefits the status quo will weaponize the government to prevent any changes to housing policy.
These people keep arguing that a Bernie-style politics is untenable because it alienates the oligarchy, which they say is essential to stand up to Trump. But the oligarchy is unreliable! They are amoral to anything other than what maximizes their profits and perpetuates their standing in the national order. Most of the same companies that "went woke" after the George Floyd protests mostly turned on those corporate policies and branding once Trump took office and they sensed a vibe shift. The center is out of ideas, and this brand of politics needs to die in order to make room for a movement that will really challenge the status quo.
She much talk but the answer is short: one cannot dismiss the fact that capitalism itself is the elephant in the room by creating some innocuous, performative nomenclature of “abundance.”
Stumbled back onto this review after recently reading Abundance myself, and I completely resonate with what's said here, especially regarding how the text bounces back between grand and granular. It either proselytizes against the excesses of the right and left or spends far too much time quibbling over small example events.
Klein and Thompson offer some compelling visions of what material development we'll ultimately need, but don't do nearly enough to explain how any of what they're proposing hasn't already been tried. They're right, redistribution isn't enough, but they also just move right past any significant conversation about it.
Moreover, I just can't see the public really resonating with much of what they're talking about. Too much what, not enough why or how. Your agenda won't go anywhere with an electorate on "we need more stuff" alone.
Your description of what freedom means -- or ought to mean -- was bracing and is rarely heard in these parts.
Americans struggle to give it that abundantly (yes, indeed!) generous definition. The stirring tones of the Proclamation of Emancipation could have been a start and FDR's Four Freedoms did hint at a guarantee of something more than mere subsistence but the effort stalls soon after that. We look back at what Gary Gerstle calls the New Deal Order with fondness, a type of Fordism on a national scale for the country's white population. Even so, we tell ourselves, it was far better than the Social Darwinist alternatives from the Gilded Age that reactionaries like Robert Taft and Fred Hartley wanted us to return to. Yet it was just a matter of time before the dismantlers would succeed and they made their first move with the 1973 Powell Memo, still worth reading as the guiding spirit for today's Project 2025.
As you point out in your review essay, but in a too circumlocutionary way, this book is In the spirit of Gerstle. Klein and Thompson -- with their fellow travelers, Noah Smith and Matt Ygelsisas -- want to claim the mantle of that New Deal Order but substantially reworked and without a jot of the redistributionist and regulatory force of the original program. In fact, they would happily identify with deregulatory zeal of the current Gilded Age for large swathes of the economy.
Their vision then amounts to this: "efficient" delivery of "public goods" that increases the "productivity" of the economy. (Quotation marks only to emphasize their touchstones.) From this, we get the non-zero sum game. Workers receive cheaper and better housing, child care, health care, education, social insurance, etc., thanks to government investment while the private-sector gets highly productive and economically secure labor input and can count on high growth to sustain their drive for profits.
This not how capitalism works, or has ever worked. The primeval drive for profits is maximal and all-consuming. Michael Kalecki told us, capitalism needs -- even requires -- the insecurity of workers to survive. Private capital in a market economy is savage, predatory and will use politics, the law, technological innovation, whatever, to suck the marrow of economic value to usurp for itself. It must necessarily be shackled.
Your conclusion was right on the mark. The book is another artful attempt to salvage the discredited belief system known as neoliberalism. Lipstick on a pick? Quite possibly.
It’s always like this, more or less w Ezra Klein: he gives an extremely insulated ideological take that he’s convinced is not ideological (bc as a liberal wonk, he thinks ideology is a pejorative). So the thinking never gets outside of that neoliberal box. I mean: there cannot be abundance in capitalism and the (corporate captured) state is inefficient in regulating it—by design, right? How is that not a premise the book must deal with? This is exactly why Bernie is not the Trump of the left, I mean? As an average person it’s a particularly exhausting experience, watching this kind of political immaturity pass for the latest “innovation.”
It's a bizzare book. It's a books about production but without any political economy or industrial policy. It's enemies are what the 10 antigrowthers, NIMBY's as this massive organised class and the housing asset economy which they want to devalue (I think?). It isn't really about California, it's about San Franciso.
Calling it 220 pages long is generous, it's maybe 110 without footnotes.
“The paucity of abundance” well done, Luke. You’re embracing Marx on title shithousery.
A very well written and thorough article.
The arguments brought forth by Klein and Thompson about zoning and housing are particularly grating because the examples they give, like Houston building more houses than say NYC or LA or so on, don't actually investigate the reality and facts on the ground. Namely, ask a Houston resident or an expert in Houston housing about the quality of the housing built or the actual reasons why it's built (which had to do with tech companies, especially major semiconductor companies like Nvidia, AMD, Intel, etc. moving into places like Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, etc.), and the reality that they convey is dismal and critical. Funny how that never gets explored in Abundance.
Probably because it would debunk part of it's premise in regards to zoning.
And again and again, Klein and Thompson try to nuance monger to obfuscate and confuse, especially in the critical idea of how moneyed interests play a very critical role in why zoning and construction and housing and healthcare so much more is so expensive and ineffective, which the Abundance duo very pointedly don't really acknowledge or grapple with or at the very least, dance around and obfuscate around. Instead Klein instead blames environmentalists for the reason why regulations strangle development in housing and public transit and so on. How curious that centrist liberal types like Klein and so on, that their critiques are always aimed at those beside or below them but NEVER above.
Like the idea that Klein brought up about how NIMBYs and real estate developers are two types of moneyed interests with competing interests so "moneyed interests" can't be the overarching problem of why things can't be built in America and of restrictive zoning policies
In regards to conversations of affordable housing, NIMBYs and real estate developers aren't really in conflict with each other as the problem is that developers never really build affordable housing because where's the money in that? Instead, they build luxury apartment buildings with whatever legally mandated affordable apartments baked into the center while the majority of the luxury apartments are bought and sold to use as mostly investment vehicles, not actual places of living. Why bother renting these apartments when you can sell them for the equivalent price of 100 months worth of rent all at once? This is a common problem in urban development and why urbanists are critical of it. Just because NIMBYs and real estate develops seemingly clash when it comes to money-power is not as what it seems on the surface. They ultimately have the same money-power interest which does not include truly affordable housing. Instead it's always public-private partnerships that give public money to subsidize private development with little to no strings or oversight.
There's also the Faircloth Amendment, lobbied by real estate developers, NIMBYs, and so many other moneyed interests which restricts the construction of public housing units that can be built and operated. To quote the National Coalition For The Homeless from their page about it which explains thr Faircloth Amendment,
"In 1998, through the Faircloth Amendment, the U.S. Government created an artificial barrier by limiting the number of public housing units that federal authorities could build and has resulted in many people being left without a home. This amendment prevents any net increase in public housing stock from the number of units as of October 1, 1999. Simply put, the Faircloth Amendment sets a cap on the number of units any public housing authority (PHA) could own and operate, effectively halting new construction of public housing. This prevents policymakers from using a vital tool, building more permanent affordable housing, to address our nation’s growing housing and homelessness crisis."
"In the two decades since the Faircloth Amendment passed, rent costs have skyrocketed while average incomes have not. The median inflation-adjusted rent has increased 13.0 percent since 2001, while the median inflation-adjusted renter’s income has only increased 0.5 percent during that same period. This obstacle in creating more affordable housing that the amendment created, is happening while there is a $70 billion backlog in funding for maintenance and repairs to existing public housing stock."
Thank you for doing the work here. From the brief bit I'd heard or picked up about Abundance, I was assuming it was simply neoliberalism rebranded and it's nice to have that confirmed.
I don’t even disagree with many of the Abundance Agenda policy proposals--I'm all for making the government less bureaucratic (like removing means-testing and making social programs universal) and for making government services more consumer-friendly. But this scans as a déjà vu rebrand of Elizabeth Warren’s "I Have a Plan." It's policy without the politics, and it seems like this class of pundits either don't get power, or willfully obfuscate it. The government is inefficient and poorly regulates industries because both parties have a vested interest in keeping it dysfunctional, because it gives their donors the political ammo to privatize public services while maintaining record-high profits.
Housing would be a great example of them conflating the symptom with the disease. Sure, zoning is outdated, and building regulations are cumbersome, and we should increase urban density and prioritize 15-minute neighborhoods. But why is our housing in this state? My hunch is that it's because housing is financialized, which turns the main goal of housing into making it a vector of profit rather than sheltering the most amount of people. This profoundly warps incentives. Anything to increase housing supply will decrease the value of existing housing, so NIMBYs, BlackRock, HOAs, or whatever interest that benefits the status quo will weaponize the government to prevent any changes to housing policy.
These people keep arguing that a Bernie-style politics is untenable because it alienates the oligarchy, which they say is essential to stand up to Trump. But the oligarchy is unreliable! They are amoral to anything other than what maximizes their profits and perpetuates their standing in the national order. Most of the same companies that "went woke" after the George Floyd protests mostly turned on those corporate policies and branding once Trump took office and they sensed a vibe shift. The center is out of ideas, and this brand of politics needs to die in order to make room for a movement that will really challenge the status quo.
She much talk but the answer is short: one cannot dismiss the fact that capitalism itself is the elephant in the room by creating some innocuous, performative nomenclature of “abundance.”
Written in 1995, the essay topic may not immediately appear relevant, but the significance in the personal, interpersonal, and societal are striking.
https://substack.com/@2serve4christ/note/c-123435004
Stumbled back onto this review after recently reading Abundance myself, and I completely resonate with what's said here, especially regarding how the text bounces back between grand and granular. It either proselytizes against the excesses of the right and left or spends far too much time quibbling over small example events.
Klein and Thompson offer some compelling visions of what material development we'll ultimately need, but don't do nearly enough to explain how any of what they're proposing hasn't already been tried. They're right, redistribution isn't enough, but they also just move right past any significant conversation about it.
Moreover, I just can't see the public really resonating with much of what they're talking about. Too much what, not enough why or how. Your agenda won't go anywhere with an electorate on "we need more stuff" alone.