Abundance

by Ezra Klein

Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially.

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

Progressivism’s promises and policies, for decades, were built around giving people money, or money-like vouchers, to go out and buy something that the market was producing but that the poor could not afford.

But giving people a subsidy for a good whose supply is choked is like building a ladder to try to reach an elevator that is racing ever upward.

An uncanny economy has emerged in which a secure, middle-class lifestyle receded for many, but the material trappings of middle-class success became affordable to most. 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.