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‘Abundance’: An Optimistic, if Liberal Argument for Human Progress
Chuck Donovan
April 23, 2025
A new book from two authors on the self-avowed liberal end of the political spectrum has a striking title: “Abundance.” Well-written and well-informed by citations to the writings of generations of economists and scientists, “Abundance” represents an attempt, bold in parts and tentative at others, to break away from the grip of pessimistic accounts of the human future. The
book does so by leveling a critical gaze at some of the successes, as well as appalling failures, visited upon U.S. society by the apparatuses of government at various levels.
This frankness is the book’s strength, as well as the key to the plea it makes for both liberals and conservatives to rethink their creedal response to issues of science and human progress. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have the right credentials for their task. Klein writes for The New York Times and Thompson for The Atlantic, a venerable magazine that appears to be growing in size and influence as a voice for critics of the Trump administration. Each hosts a podcast. Pleasingly, each dedicates their book to their family, with Klein describing his wife and two children in a dedication as “my abundance.”
Abundance is a rich word that could mark a departure from the philosophy of scarcity that has scourged much of modern life. This outlook has been associated with a number of issues across the political spectrum of elite national leadership. In the 1960s and ‘70s it was the “population bomb,” popularized by Paul Ehrlich with the publication of a book by that name in 1968. More significant was the “Report of the Rockefeller Commission on Population Growth and the American Future,” which appeared in 1972 and was hailed by the Nixon administration as a call for federal action on abortion, sex education, and other measures, domestically and internationally, to tamp down birth rates.
But there were other scares as well some real and others exploited as a means to amass government power and curb development. In the 1970s, this trend included a raft of environmental legislation, which morphed over time into today’s often hysterical predictions of imminent doom via climate change. Other aspects of the problem, like lost habitats and endangered species, resonated with most people and sparked efforts at preservation with support in both major parties.
Klein and Thompson’s account of these matters is detailed and not
standard fare for liberal journalists. The facts do not permit reflexive partisan analysis. Their inventory of failure covers housing, energy usage, the dearth of primary care physicians, gaps in health care, and other challenges. The lack of new housing and the unaffordability crisis merit particular scorn. They ruefully note, for example, that five major counties encompassing Chicago, Manhattan, Brooklyn (where Klein lives), Los Angeles, and San Francisco are on pace to lose 50% of their under-age-five population of children over the next 20 years. It does not escape their notice that these jurisdictions are controlled, and have been for decades, by Democratic politicians who claim to speak for middle-class families.
“Abundance” compiles some startling facts about recent remedial efforts to address the housing issue in these jurisdictions, but success has been, to say the least, elusive. For this, too, the authors fix blame on a succession of decisions by liberal political actors who have drowned progress in massive webs of regulation and bureaucracy. The authors devote pages to describing a single housing project for the homeless in Los Angeles, site of streetscarring encampments, and how a web of regulations and environmental requirements drove the per unit cost to more than $600,000, more than twice the amount the same project would have cost in Houston, Texas, a city that has no comparable homelessness. Paid consultants abound in these close-knit political circles, further driving up expenses.
Housing is not the only or most prominent issue of bad building. California is now internationally famous for its multi-billion-dollar failure at building high-speed rail, a project pursued under successive Democratic administrations that is nowhere near completion. In fact, after 12 years of study, they write, the project’s environmental review is still pending.
Republicans do not get off scot-free in their analysis of why American science and technology have not created a low- to moderate-cost societal utopia. They trace that aspect of the problem to a reflexive, conservative antipathy to government, which ignores the actual history of public and private sector collaborations that have produced the major benefits in quality of life we see all around us. Here their book research is at its best, as
the history of these matters is a complex tale whose details are worth recalling. The development of the internet under the guidance of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is explored as an example of a relatively free-wheeling collaboration of scientists, engineers, and other experts in the private sector, universities, and government. They note how DARPA played a key role not only in creating the internet, but in the creation of GPS, personal computers, and self-driving cars. Republicans who automatically dismiss government’s role as an inspirer and coordinator of talent often pursue slash-and-burn approaches that are as ideological as those of no-growth Democrats.
Klein and Thompson unself-consciously illustrate the challenges before us all, however, in their treatment of solutions. As they make plain early in “Abundance,” their primary technological interest is in finding answers to climate change. They write in a near-Utopian manner of the need for swift development of technologies that can recapture carbon from the atmosphere. Planting trees comes in for much less mention than moving toward vegetarianism and away from cattle and beef.
In these areas and several others, their account does not wrestle with the lack of consensus on policies and human preferences that are not at root technological issues. They also underplay the extent to which Americans who do not support grandiose national visions, whether depicted as growth enhancers or limiters, do support practical steps to limit pollution, make cities more family-friendly, and promote healthier food and medicine. For example, the evident smog that choked American cities in the 1970s after our post-War reindustrialization prompted government to enact CAFE standards leading to massive reductions in automobile emissions. Americans generally welcomed these changes and they represent improvements in the market spurred by government but answerable to popular wishes. Expensive electric and driverless cars may not be on the same trajectory.
A touch of partisanship creeps into “Abundance” elsewhere as the book admits openly its aim as the revitalization of one party and its outlook. The
authors describe in detail how Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) cut through layers of rules and regulations in 2023 to reopen a severely damaged highway bridge near Philadelphia just 12 days after it was destroyed by a tanker truck fire. It is a perfect illustration of the authors’ thesis that “people like it when their government gets things done.” The point would have been even stronger, however, had they seen fit to include the even larger examples that occurred in Florida under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis (R) after Hurricane Ian destroyed the Sanibel Causeway and caused severe damage across the state. Examples on both sides of the aisle exist and would have strengthened the book’s core argument that government can (and should) be a force for good.
“Abundance” is about embracing a change in attitude about human possibility that is, on its own terms, welcome. Is it in fact a changemaker? Past efforts, like Ben Wattenberg’s “The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong” (1984) and “The Birth Dearth” (1987), to recenter political thinking around optimism about what is to come have often been scorned by their contemporaries. Needless to say, the tolling of the bells of doom has not disappeared from our national lexicon, as interests vested in centrally planned governments around the world broadcast fear with every new pronouncement from Davos or Geneva. Recovering hope and a belief in abundance, deciding to build and not demolish, is ultimately much more than a judgment about the balance of government and the private sector, or about the roles of science and technology. The core questions remain, an abundance of what and for whom?
“Abundance” does not delve into the fraught questions of ethics and individual worth that are the quiet drivers behind what counts as human progress or blind regression. If we truly want to “have life and have it more abundantly,” these are the questions in most urgent need of civil debate and better answers.
“Abundance” is published by Avid Reader Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
Topics:Pop Culture, Political Parties, Public Policy, Trump Administration
Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.