1 week Ago By Benjamin Clark
If you’ve listened to a US politics podcast or scrolled through X recently (never a good idea), you might have heard of Abundance , the new book by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. It has ignited a debate in a way few wonkish treatises do. According to Klein and Thompson, the Democrats’ reflex for socially important goods like housing and healthcare is to help poorer people pay for them through vouchers and tax credits, but then struggle to ensure an adequate supply of those goods, especially in affluent, blue-leaning states like California and New York.
Thus, problems like housing affordability worsen at a rate that subsidy programs can’t keep up with. Why the supply crunch? Klein and Thompson argue that liberals have become so focused on ensuring the state does no harm that they have wrapped themselves in review processes that restrict their ability to deliver on promises. But now, with the climate crisis making energy infrastructure development a matter of literal life and death, American liberalism needs fewer lawyerly proceduralists and more can-do builders.
It needs an “abundance agenda” . Abundance doesn’t pretend to offer the Democratic Party a policy platform. Nonetheless, it is being touted by various Democratic leaders and represents the first semblance of intellectual renewal in the moribund party after its devastating November loss.
The book is not without its critics — some reasonable , others less so . In emphasising the way liberals have self-sabotaged their own agenda, Klein and Thompson underemphasise the ways corporate interests — and, indeed, Republicans themselves — have driven progressive projects toward “death by a thousand consultations”. But they have thrown down a welcome gauntlet to those who regard themselves as progressive reformers.
Abundance Down Under The core question of Abundance — can left-leaning governments deliver real-world outcomes? — is perhaps the unstated test of Anthony Albanese’s prime ministership, on which he has spent three years floundering. This federal election campaign is defined by cost of living concerns. Regarding the costs voters are most concerned about — housing and energy — Australia is seeing the same bureaucratic inertia as in the US.
These problems have distributional elements; welfare policies are required to ensure the poorest can cover their basic needs. But a lack of overall supply has also been made painfully apparent since COVID, and there is much more the federal government could do to fix these bottlenecks. On housing, Albanese has helped encourage some state-level relaxation of planning rules by providing payments to states that exceed their homebuilding targets.
The Commonwealth has also kicked in some funding for homebuilding to help meet a nationwide goal of 1.2 million new homes by 2029, but has been slow to disburse the funds. No-one seriously thinks this target will be hit unless more is done.
One key bottleneck is the shortage of skilled tradespeople, on which the government has refused to increase the migration cap. On energy, Tanya Plibersek insists she is approving wind farms faster than any previous environment minister. The industry begs to differ , complaining that “securing environmental approval is becoming more difficult, particularly for wind”.
Simon Corbell, chief executive of the Clean Energy Investor Group, told the Guardian last year that the approval process for renewables is “stacked against developers” and that “multiple projects owned by our members ...
have been in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation process for several years”. The government had a chance to improve this with its new set of environmental laws, but Albanese controversially delayed those late last year. More is more State governments are making a little more progress, having placed a recent emphasis on un-gumming the works to deliver housing and transport projects.
The Victorian government last year expanded its powers to fast-track renewable projects. Previously, more than 20% of the state’s project applications were “stuck” in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, despite most being eventually approved. Meanwhile in NSW, Sydney’s new metro system is exactly the kind of project that grabs voters by the collar and says, “See? We can actually do stuff to make your life better.
” But my home state of Victoria has been governed by Labor for all but four years this century, and the long-awaited airport train line is still not expected to open for another five to eight years , as it has been for the past few decades . It is this kind of non-delivery that eventually erodes faith in government action and, crucially, bolsters those vowing to “slash the hopeless bureaucrats”. Peter Dutton’s and Donald Trump’s agendas are both based on scarcity.
We can’t possibly build enough homes for a growing and inclusive nation, so we must cut migration. We can’t possibly build enough renewables, so we must conserve our existing gas. We must cut government services and live with less.
Better things aren’t possible. There is an opening here, should Labor dare to take it. Against the right’s Darwinian bungfight for existing resources, the left could own the case for “more” — if only it can start to deliver.
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