Is Abundance the Roadmap to Rebuild the American Dream?

This week on the Next Big Idea — Derek Thompson on how to actually rebuild the American dream. 

Listen on Apple or Spotify … and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Every now and then a book comes out that is vitally important, and perfectly timed. It’s in the window of every bookstore, everyone is talking about it. That book, right now, is Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

Abundance — no subtitle — answers two pressing questions so many of us have in this moment of political and economic turmoil: How did we get here, and what can we do about it? Is there a path forward that could pull our country together, and address the daunting range of challenges we face? Derek and Ezra’s answer is abundance, a liberalism that builds — an unapologetically pro-growth, pro-construction agenda to bring down the cost of housing, address the challenge of climate change, and accelerate the technologies that can transform our world of scarcity into one of abundance. 

You’ve probably heard of Derek and Ezra. Ezra is an opinion columnist at the NYT, and Derek is a staff writer at the Atlantic. They’re Democrats. But in Abundance, they are deeply critical of their own party. As Derek puts it:

 We have to look in the mirror and say that the reason the Democratic brand is profoundly in the shitter // is not because Republicans have lied about outcomes in democratically run places, but rather much more depressingly because the people who live there have noticed.  … Democrats should be able to gesture toward California and say, “Vote for us and we'll make America like California.” But instead California, with its homelessness rates and its housing prices and its public disorder, is a place where Republicans can instead // say, “Vote for Democrats and they'll make America like California.”

This tough love from two heavyweight journalists has rubbed more than a few liberals the wrong way. It’s been called “wishful thinking” and symptomatic of a “quiet distrust of democracy” in the Guardian. Meanwhile, conservative David Brooks wrote a glowing review, saying Derek and Ezra “inspire hope and enlarge the imagination by describing the good things that are actually within our grasp." Is this a sign “the Abundance Agenda,” as Derek and Ezra call it, might have bipartisan appeal?

This is a time of confusion and despair for many Americans, and it’s in such times that we have historically come together as a nation and taken bold actions. The New Deal, born out of the Great Depression, was crafted by FDR, a Democrat, but sustained and expanded by Republican Dwight D Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan's era of deregulation, which was a response to post-Vietnam malaise and stagflation, was sustained into the 21st century by Bill Clinton and, some would say, Barack Obama. We are now experiencing the tumultuous end of a political order, according to Derek and Ezra. We need a new one — an agenda that cuts across party lines and invigorates conservative and liberals alike.

Abundance is a wildly ambitious book — a manifesto, and blueprint for a new era of American politics. You may agree with it; you may not. Here’s my take: It is the best explanation I have encountered of how decisions that were often well-intentioned landed us — Americans of all political persuasions — in a place of pessimism and frustration. It’s also the best roadmap I have seen for how we can now expand upon under-appreciated successes from our past to build a better future.

This book, and this conversation with Derek Thompson, was just what I needed, in this moment … I hope you feel the same way.

Listen on Apple or Spotify … and let us know what you think in the comments below.