US Midterms: The 'Abundance' Movement

Is this a smart return to pro-market liberalism, liberals returning to free-market conservatism, the same old system or a dangerous break from successful regulation?

Published 6 days ago

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Above: Townhome construction in Corktown, Detroit, Mich., on April 11. Image credit: Jim West/UCG/Getty Images

The Spin

Democratic narrative

The abundance movement offers a hopeful vision of government and markets working together to lower housing, energy and infrastructure costs while expanding opportunity and economic growth. Reducing unnecessary red tape could help communities thrive and make public institutions more effective, but reforms should still protect workers, preserve democratic input and prevent corporate interests from exploiting deregulation at the expense of labor standards, local communities or the environment.

Roosevelt Institute Brookings

Republican narrative

This movement reflects a welcome recognition from the left that excessive bureaucracies have made it too difficult and expensive to build housing and infrastructure in the U.S. Expanding economic growth and innovation requires cutting red tape, limiting bureaucratic micromanagement and giving private industry more freedom to compete and build. At the same time, reforms should avoid replacing one form of overregulation with centralized technocratic control that could create new inefficiencies and political favoritism.

Reason.com Aei

Progressive narrative

While there is promise, a genuinely inclusive version of abundance would require engaging organized labor and smart policies regarding investment and development. The abundance movement, as currently composed, risks reviving a technocratic form of liberalism that treats faster construction as a universal solution while downplaying corporate power, inequality and democratic accountability. Expanding housing, energy and infrastructure matters, but it can, and should, be done so in a holistic way.

The Liberal Patriot Jacobin Inclusive Abundance

Libertarian narrative

The abundance movement correctly recognizes that government-created scarcity is often driven by zoning rules, permitting delays, lawsuits and tax policies that discourage investment, entrepreneurship and new construction. However, it will fail if it becomes another justification for centralized planning, massive public spending and politically directed industrial policy instead of competition and consumer choice. It would also require lowering taxes on investment to allow markets, builders and private capital to respond more efficiently to demand, rather than the same old system of government confiscation and control of capital.

Cato Foundation for Economic Education

Cynical narrative

Any politics centered on "abundance" risks repeating the mistakes of decades of reckless deregulation that weakened public oversight, empowered corporate lobbying and eroded the public commons by incorrectly framing it as a marketplace. Robust regulations have successfully stopped corporations from cutting corners at the public's expense. Dismantling regulatory institutions will inevitably deepen inequality and leave decision-making up to private capital. Abundance ideology, in any form, must be resisted altogether.

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