Even in the pre-internet era, a nonfiction book on how to build more through regulatory reform would not have been an obvious hit. And yet, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson was an instant New York Times bestseller upon its release in March of last year, setting off a wide discussion among Democratic politicians, voters, and commentators about what the party’s policy agenda should look like.
Building off a 2022 essay by Thompson, Abundance made the case for what can be characterized as “supply-side progressivism”: the idea that the American left has been more concerned with blocking harmful economic development than with encouraging beneficial development, and—borrowing some ideas long popular on the economic right—that legislators can better the lives of their constituents by simply making it easier to build.
More than a year later, the topics and ideas Thompson and Klein brought to the center of the public conversation have started meeting policy. On Tuesday, Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the largest housing bill in over 30 years, by overwhelming margins in each chamber. The legislation aims to remove barriers to building homes, lower housing costs, and give local government more control over housing policy. But it also includes demand-side measures—a new program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages and a provision that restricts large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes—and President Donald Trump is refusing to sign the housing bill into law until Congress also approves a controversial elections measure.
Some of the movement’s policy ideas are having a moment in Congress, but despite Klein’s influence in the Democratic Party and the sudden ubiquity of “abundance” talk, that hasn’t translated into an embrace of the broader agenda in this year’s Democratic primaries.
On Wednesday, New York City voters picked multiple Democratic Socialist candidates in the city’s primaries, including Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier. Valdez, for one, has called for “universal rent control,” pledging that “expanding rent stabilization is definitely one way that we can expand tenant power and keep people in their homes.”
Last night, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze rents on the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
Source: The Dispatch
QUESTIONS:
Do you believe that “Abundance Policies” deserve support?
Why do you think Abundance Policies haven’t received more support from Democrats?
Do Mayor Mamdani’s policies include any supply-side aspect, or are they overwhelmingly about caps, such as capping rents?