To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough. Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance.
Ambitious ... Klein and Thompson’s influence is one good reason to see these books as blueprints for a political movement. Abundance is a fair-minded book, and it recognizes some of the trade-offs that come with redesigning government for dynamism.
A sharp cry ... Dramatizing the innovator’s plight, Abundance occasionally reads like the brief of a few elite finance and tech bros in two or three coastal cities who are mainly upset by clogged transit and red tape ... Klein and Thompson have no answers for how to get the masses back their mojo, and Abundance does not seriously confront a big reason for Democratic aversion to dreaming big: neoliberal globalization.
A potent political manifesto ... It’s a bit like discussing how you’d like to redecorate your house while your neighbors strip the copper wiring from your walls. Still, if the book’s vision of a world after abundance seems distant, its optimism is also compelling, even joyous ... It suffers at times from a lack of clear structure. But Abundance is unabashed in synthesizing good ideas ... The book’s core lesson, convincingly delivered, is that liberals ought to make it easier to do the things they want to do.
