Abundance

by Ezra Klein

implementation, not mere invention, determines the pace of progress.

“America has the ability to invent. China has the ability to build. The first country that can figure out how to do both will be the superpower.”

John Maynard Keynes offered an elegant answer in his 1926 book The End of Laissez-Faire. “The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all,”

recognize that wise policy begins with an investigation rather than an ideology that tries to force the same key into a variety of ill-fitting locks.

If push funding pays for effort, pull funding pays for success.

POLITICS IS A WAY OF organizing conflict,

according to Gerstle. The New Deal order rose in the 1930s and collapsed in the 1970s. The neoliberal order rose in the 1970s and declined in the 2010s.

Throughout the 2010s, a slow economic recovery fueled public resentment of inequality, and an affordability crisis gathered steam. In 2020, the pandemic obliterated many Americans’ trust in government, or what was left of it. And between 2021 and 2024, inflation brought national attention to our interlocking crises of scarcity, supply, and unaffordability.

the public is casting about for a politics that feels like it is of today rather than of yesterday.

Right-wing populism seeks power by closing doors, halting change, and venerating the businesses and dominance hierarchies of the past. Scarcity is its handmaiden. So too is the sense that governments today are weak and corrupt and, therefore, that strongmen are needed to see the world clearly and deliver on democracy’s failed promises.

Trump understood the dark side of competition, but he never understood the possibilities of cooperation.

politics of scarcity. That has left room for liberals to embrace what Republicans have abandoned: a politics of abundance.

difficulty that Biden and Harris had in trying to run on their record in 2024 was that few communities were yet seeing benefit from all this construction their policies were meant to spark.

Marx’s aim was not to turn the production machine off, but to direct its ends toward a shared abundance:

More than a law, it was a lens.

To pursue abundance is to pursue institutional renewal. One of the most dangerous political pathologies is the tendency to defend whatever your enemies attack. Decades of attacks on the state have turned liberals into reflexive champions of government. But if you believe in government, you must make it work. To make it work, you must be clear-eyed about when it fails and why it fails.

That we have not matched our institutions to our moment is our failure, not theirs.