A new book suggests a path forward for Democrats. The left hates it | Cutting red tape is a social justice issue

# Flaws in *Abundance*

> Nevertheless, not everyone on the left buys what they’re selling. And Abundance has some real flaws.

> In their concern with winning over progressive skeptics, Klein and Thompson sometimes elide the genuine tradeoffs between their vision and progressive ideology. For example, while they lament the stifling impact of various environmental regulations on housing and clean energy construction, they’re cagey about precisely how, and how much, they want to change such laws. Rather than stating plainly that they’re willing to reduce regulatory obstacles to fossil fuel infrastructure for the sake of abetting the build-out of renewables — a position Klein has endorsed in his New York Times column — they argue that going into details about how environmental laws should be amended would be beside the point, since “no individual law” would solve all the problems they identify and “What is needed here is a change in political culture, not just legislation.” Such slipperiness may make Abundance more palatable to progressives, but also invites distrust.

# Leftist critiques of *Abundance*

> This said, much of the left’s criticism of abundance liberalism is off-base and unfair. One especially prominent charge is that the abundance agenda entails a retreat from the progressive movement’s commitments to economic justice and equality. In this account, Klein and Thompson want Democrats to stop catering to the particular needs of poor and working-class Americans — through expansions of social welfare programs or labor regulations — and start concentrating on maximizing economic growth.

> The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes that the abundance movement views stagnation as a “national emergency” that requires “liberals to sideline their quest for a Scandinavian-style social democracy.” And he fears that the pursuit of Klein and Thompson’s vision could yield a less equitable society.

> Wallace-Wells nevertheless endorses some aspects of the abundance agenda. Other critics are less measured. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis argues in the American Prospect that abundance liberals prize “growth above all,” and that their ideology is merely a repackaging of “free-market dogma.”

> Likewise, The Baffler’s Alex Bronzini-Vender derides the abundance agenda as a “Koch-funded initiative” aimed at “reversing the Democratic Party’s skepticism of neoliberal orthodoxy.”

# Flaws in leftist critiques of *Abundance*

> These criticisms are off-base in more ways than one.

> First, it’s simply not true that Klein and Thompson call on liberals to abandon welfare state expansion or to pursue growth at all costs. They explicitly state that “redistribution is important” — their argument isn’t that expanding the safety net is undesirable, but rather, that doing so is insufficient for maximizing ordinary Americans’ living standards.

> Further, Abundance argues that the federal government should play a larger role in managing the economy, so as to accelerate the development of socially valuable technologies and steer economic growth in an ecologically friendly direction. To say that Klein, Thompson, and other abundance liberals are free market dogmatists because they oppose some regulations is a bit like saying Joe Manchin is a Stalinist because he opposes Medicare cuts.

> But those who critique the abundance agenda on egalitarian grounds are making a more fundamental analytical error: Combating regulatory obstacles to housing construction, infrastructure, and energy production is not just compatible with prioritizing the interests of working-class Americans; it is synonymous with that task. An economic system biased toward scarcity and stagnation is one that serves the already comfortable better than the disadvantaged.

I say this as a New Yorker, those on the left wonder why Cuomo is probably gonna win, when the left is in charge less housing is built, less transportation is construction, NIMBYISM is killing the left. Moderates are far more willing, although not enough, to cut regulations or at the very least not create new ones.