The Abundance Debate Is Broken. Heres How to Fix It.
The NationAUG 13
Abundance
Above: Derek Thompson at The Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C. on Sept.20, 2024. Image credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for The Atlantic
The Spin
Liberal narrative
"Abundance" is a bracing corrective to progressives who excuse government dysfunction by blaming inequality alone. Klein and Thompson persuasively show how housing, transit and clean energy are strangled by inefficiency and overregulation, making life harder for working people. Yet the book stops short — reluctant to fully indict progressive assumptions or confront the political strategy needed for reform — leaving its transformative vision only partly realized. Nonetheless, it’s a must-read for Democrats who want government to deliver abundance, not excuses.
Progressive narrative
Klein and Thompson’s work is old wine in new bottles. Rather than confront the roots of inequality or populist backlash shaping today’s political discontent, it recasts deregulatory dogmas as the “abundance agenda” — a corporate-centrist push to regain control of the Democratic Party at the expense of its social-justice aims. In a post-neoliberal era where progressives have real influence, their approach sidesteps the central fight for equity, favoring cosmetic growth tweaks over the fair distribution of wealth and power that working people demand.
Conservative narrative
"Abundance" confirms what conservatives on the right have long known: regulatory overreach and labor union influence throttle American innovation and construction. Klein and Thompson rightly critique left-wing scarcity politics but undermine their own supply-driven logic by calling for “better” government, assuming policymakers can outpace market forces. Their agenda is less a bold plan than a bid to escape political irrelevance, trying on new skins while leaving market freedom — the true engine of abundance — largely sidelined.
Establishment-critical narrative
Klein and Thompson’s vision mistakes abundance for governance. By treating politics as a supply problem, they ignore the deeper crisis of power: who decides what gets built and who benefits. Deregulation without accountability simply hands more influence to entrenched elites. The book critiques sclerosis but evades democracy, offering technocratic fixes in place of structural reform. Without reckoning with monopoly, corruption and industry capture, the “abundance agenda" risks being another elite rebrand of the status quo.