‘Abundance’ Review: Supply-Side Liberalism

Two progressive intellectuals explain where the American left went wrong—but without a hint of self-criticism or admission of past errors

By Barton Swaim. He reviews the book “Abundance,” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Excerpts:

"Governmental grant-making procedures hobble scientific research with paperwork and delay; zoning regulations make housing in large cities hopelessly expensive and worsen the problem of homelessness; lawsuits filed by environmental groups make urban development more costly and time-consuming; and so on.

[the authors] favor scrapping outdated laws and regulations that hinder construction, retard innovation and stunt economic growth for no good reason. Here and there readers of a conservative disposition will scrawl “duh” in the margins."

"The authors might best be described as Marxist technocrats smart enough to know they’ll need a market economy to pay for their utopian vision. I don’t use the term “Marxist” for effect. The book’s conclusion includes three paragraphs on how the “Communist Manifesto” was right about production."

"The possibility that the climate agenda is chiefly about amassing power in the hands of transnational elites rather than about what is actually happening in the earth’s atmosphere is, for them, not thinkable."

"They disregard the history and political cultures of other nations and assume that what’s feasible in theirs must work in ours. On California’s spectacular inability to build a high-speed rail system, for example, they fault the state for outsourcing much of the design and construction to a web of private-sector consultancies rather than building the entire project itself, as Europe and Japan have done."

"For this and similar fiascos they blame Republicans, who’ve “spent decades demonizing government.” They may as well blame Americans for rewarding a party that demonizes government. State and federal officialdom in the U.S. has never had, and will never have, the prestige that civil service has in Western Europe and Japan. Capable engineers and technicians can make far more money in America’s private sector than their European and Japanese correlatives can in theirs. Few, therefore, are likely to take government jobs. The brutal fact is that no U.S. state is going to build a high-speed rail network to rival Europe’s or Japan’s—among other reasons because Americans are not soon likely to tolerate taxes (particularly on their state returns) sufficiently burdensome to support such a mammoth project."

"The authors neglect to mention that Germany’s fixation on achieving net-zero emissions has crippled its ability to pay for power generation through 2030 and that electricity rates are therefore headed upward at a time when the country’s economy is stagnating and its military desperately needs rebuilding. But by all means let’s follow Germany’s example."