The Progressive Abundance Agenda vs. Progressives

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

 

There is an emerging debate on the Left over the degree to which the tenets of popular progressivism have contributed to the Democratic Party’s political woes. When it comes to the progressive activist class’s boutique cultural bugbears, the debate has been decisively won by their critics. But there is an economic component to this critique, too, and the outcome of that contest is far from certain.

 

At the vanguard of the movement aimed at guiding the Democratic Party toward pro-growth economic policy prescriptions, we find figures like New York Times opinion writer Ezra Klein and The Atlantic essayist Derek Thompson. Their new book, Abundance, builds on the authors’ previous works advocating “supply-side progressivism.” They advocate a cure to the ills of a regulatory framework that yields sclerosis and a remedy to the common but delusional left-wing supposition that building, inventing, developing, and producing comes at the expense of the nation’s neediest citizens.

 

The introduction of a fresh idea into the intra-progressive discourse is a welcome development. It will have to contend with many obstacles if it is to be widely adopted by the authors’ political allies. Foremost among them is the Democratic Party’s thuddingly unimaginative leadership caste, which remains wedded to the embittering economic misconception that the economy is a zero-sum game and success is to be, to some extent, resented.

 

Former vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz exemplified this outlook amid his thus far unsuccessful effort to reintroduce himself to the voting public. “They’ve got that little stock app,” he recently said of the wonders contained on his iPhone. “I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.” His audience ate it up. “Two-twenty-five and dropping,” he exclaimed.

 

It shouldn’t be surprising that Elon Musk’s publicly traded electric car company’s value has declined as he has made himself a politically polarizing figure. Indeed, it’s an odd marketing ploy to alienate your existing customer base and attempt to substitute it with one that was skeptical of his product before Musk’s political makeover. But what Walz is taking perverse satisfaction in isn’t just Musk’s misfortune but that of his shareholders, too, and everyone else who will suffer from the destruction of potential wealth.

 

Put simply, it’s good for everyone when productive enterprises create value for their firms, generate and invest capital, and grow the American economic pie. It is not just morally deficient to celebrate the misfortune of the investor class, a category into which over 60 percent of American adults fit. It’s also politically foolish.

 

Walz’s judgmental lapse is common among his fellow Democratic elders. Following his failure to conjure unattainable political victories from nothing, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s political brand is in free fall. In a bid to rehabilitate his reputation among the irrational progressive activist set, the New York Democrat committed an error that mirrors Walz’s.

 

In an appearance on ABC’s The View this week, Schumer mocked taxpayers who might chafe under the burdens federal and state governments impose on them around this time each year. “You know what their attitude is?” he asked the hosts. “I made my money all by myself,” he continued, adopting a theatrically petulant demeanor and a fake voice meant to convey a mulish obstinacy. “How dare your government take my money from me? I don’t want to pay taxes?”

 

He continued: “I built my company with my bare hands. How dare your government tell me how I should treat my customers, the land and water that I own, or my employees,” Schumer said with unveiled contempt for his imaginary foil.

 

“They hate government. Government’s a barrier to people — a barrier to stop them from doing things,” the senator concluded, bizarrely enough, in defense of the public sector. “They want to destroy it. We are not letting them do it, and we’re united.”

 

It is a testament to the Democratic Party’s institutional lethargy that someone whose political instincts are consistently this deficient could achieve the position he presently occupies. It’s bad enough that Schumer would reprise Barack Obama’s ill-considered attack on the fruits of individual productivity — although, somehow, with even more condescension — but to do so at tax season is monumentally dense. Republicans built a whole nominating convention around their opposition to the mentality crystalized in, “You didn’t build that.” The GOP is all but sure to hang Schumer’s gaffe around Democratic necks in next year’s midterm elections.

 

And yet, there is clearly a much bigger Democratic audience for politics of envy articulated by Walz and Schumer than there is for the progressive abundance agenda. That isn’t a cultural accident but an outgrowth of a political philosophy that regards economic success as a form of theft. Embedded in these remarks by Walz, Schumer, and even Obama is the assumption that individual achievement is a result of governmental beneficence — either that which the government bestows, like public infrastructure projects and grants, or that which government generously declines to extract from the public.

 

Klein and Thompson have set out to excise from progressive politics the Left’s attachment to the notion that wealth creation is a fundamentally exploitative enterprise. It’s a noble endeavor but a fraught one. As long as progressives take more satisfaction from their neighbors’ misfortune than their triumphs, the left-wing abundance agenda will find few takers.