By Noah Rothman
Thursday, September 04, 2025
Even before the book hit the shelves, it seemed to us hopeless cynics that the
Democratic activist class would not embrace the economic modesty endorsed by
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their best-seller, Abundance.
The oxymoronic concept of “supply-side progressivism” — what with its advocacy for
fewer regulations, expanded tax credits, and the decentralization or even
(gasp!) privatization of “core social goods” — seemed unlikely to appeal to a
party that was nominating candidates to high office
who pledged to seize “the means of production.” Well, sometimes cynicism is
well-earned.
Yet another polling memo conducted by parties with an
interest in throttling the “abundance” movement in its crib — including a
“liberal economics group” which seeks to “break up
concentrations of private power” — is being bandied about in the legacy press as evidence that the
left is in a “populist” mood.
“If candidates are asking which focus deserves topmost
billing in Democrats’ campaign messaging, the answer is clear,” the memo read,
“though some voters believe excessive bureaucracy can be a problem, it ranks
far behind other concerns and tackling it does not strike voters as a direct
response to the problem of affordability.”
Democratic voters, the memo indicated, do not draw a
connection between reducing or eliminating barriers to market entry,
unburdening productive sectors of the economy from unnecessary compliance
costs, and allowing people to keep more of their own money will give way to
either personal or macroeconomic growth. That says a lot more about Democratic
voters than it does the “abundance agenda,” but that is reality, as this memo
indicates. Politico quotes far-left Representative Greg Casar in their
effort to channel the sentiments of “populist” progressives: The “outsized
power of billionaires and corporations in our government is a bigger problem
than red tape and bureaucracy.”
We cannot call this a theory of economics. It dispenses
with any logical progression from point A (“billionaires and corporations” are
suffocating us) to point B (prosperity). It’s naked, contemptuous class envy.
But there is room for appeals to humanity’s basest impulses in the “abundance”
theory, according to one of its authors who seems incapable of mustering
enthusiasm for his own project. “I expect there will be a number of politicians
in 2028 that are running on abundance, populist and anti-oligarchal themes,” Ezra Klein told Axios. “The idea that someone is
going to just pick one of these things is stupid — talented politicians aren’t
just one thing.”
Sure, but two completely incompatible “things” can and
often are mutually exclusive. And at a time when “the era of weak demand is
over,” according to the arch conservatives at New York magazine, empowering government to
punish the sources of capital while going to war with prices — e.g., “cracking
down on price gouging” — will yield a shrinking pie, even if it satisfies the
Democratic Party’s inchoate desire for vengeance against their imagined
tormentors.
But then again, there really is no market on either side
of the political aisle for that sort of sound economic theory. After all, the Republican president is busily gobbling up shares of private interests, charging a vig to firms that the
White House allows to trade security technology with our adversaries, and
creating score cards designed to intimidate private actors. He may bequeath
those new interests and tools to a Democrat in the Oval Office, who will wield
them in ways preferred by a party whose voters are out for revenge.
We didn’t need a memo to understand that the future looks
bleak.
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