Abundance: A Review
By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025.
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You don’t have to be an astute political observer to understand that the United States is in a crisis of its own making. Our two-party political system has worked less and less throughout my life. The federal government can rarely get anything major done in a timely fashion and, when it can, it is not always to encouraging ends. Mostly though, it feels like there has been no positive vision for the United States since at least 2015, maybe earlier.
Everyday life feels harder too, from rising costs to creaking institutions, to relationships and communities fractured by powerful economic and cultural forces. Whether it be in government, business, or slowly crumbling civic and faith institutions, many older elites are struggling to pass the torch to the frustrated generations behind them. New power centers that emerged to try to smooth out paths around the resulting problems have often led to more conflict, isolation, communal fracturing, and weakened institutions. In her essay Everything Is Broken, written way back in 2021, Alana Newhouse wrote eloquently about how the endless pursuit of frictionlessness in American life delivered flatness, which in turn broke everything. I can’t help but think what flatness broke most is our ability to imagine that things can be different. It used to be that we at least argued about the best ways to improve our country. Now we talk like it can’t be made better. This trajectory we are on feels as unsustainable as it is unstable, regardless of who inhabits the halls of power.
Enter Abundance by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. The authors offer a compelling and portable framework for how to think about the above problems and the search for solutions. Klein and Thompson get specific about current issues like affordable housing, modern infrastructure, and better systems of regulation; however, like all good books, Abundance is about a lot more than its specific parts. In my opinion, the magic of Abundance is found in its invitation to imagine again and recapture some positive ambition along the way.
Rather than parse out the many finer points of Abundance, I want to examine how the book’s core themes are intersecting with our increasingly postmodern life and what I’ve seen and lived within church culture. Specifically, I want to survey three areas that leapt off the pages at me:
The allure of scarcity, and the death of imagination in American life
Abundance’s inevitable confrontation with power
Some theological implications of Abundance, as this is a Christian blog
Before getting into it, a brief introduction on the book itself.
Abundance, according to the authors
What Klein and Thompson do especially well is map out the deeper cultural and institutional forces that have dulled the collective American imagination. They show how bureaucracy, fear, and political stagnation converge to create a status quo defined by scarcity—not just in resources, but in mindset and vibes. The book’s dust cover sums our situation up well:
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.
The allure of scarcity, and the death of imagination in American life
I think Abundance lives up to its self-description. Even if it didn’t, the authors would still deserve credit for taking a big swing at a way out of our political and cultural milieu rather than just grumbling about it. These days, so many people feel trapped in worrying about their “place in the dirt,” to borrow a phrase from the 2014 film Interstellar. This is what scarcity does to people.
A theme that pops up throughout Abundance is that of choice. Notably, the authors write something that may feel surprising:
“And yet, the story of America in the twenty-first century is the story of chosen scarcities. Recognizing that these scarcities are chosen —that we could choose otherwise— is thrilling. Confronting the reasons we choose otherwise is maddening…
After World War II, an explosion of housing and infrastructure enriched the country. But without regulations for clean air and water, the era's builders despoiled the environment. In response, the US passed a slew of environmental regulations. But these well-meaning laws to protect nature in the twentieth century now block the clean energy projects needed in the twenty-first. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. Institutional renewal is a labor that every generation faces anew.
But some of this reflects a kind of ideological conspiracy at the heart of our politics. We are attached to a story of American decline that is centered around ideological disagreement. That makes it easy to miss pathologies rooted in ideological collusion. Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it. Debates over the size of government obscured the diminishing capacity of government. An abundance of consumer goods distracted us from a scarcity of homes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs.” (4-5)
While we are where we are because of the choices of previous generations —and it really is worth noting their choices were not all bad or done with ill intent— we are choosing to remain stuck for “maddening” reasons. In the 2024 election, a slim majority of American voters chose Donald Trump, who represents the politics of scarcity better than just about anyone. I understand people voted for Trump for different reasons. While I disagree with many of them, one I at least understand is people feeling like the system is broken, beyond repair, and needs to be wrecked so something new can replace it. Say what you want about the Trump Administration, but they’re at least delivering on that end, even if a growing number of voters already have buyer’s remorse on where this is all heading.
The Trump Campaign leaned into the politics of scarcity, hard. To provide one example, during the VP debate JD Vance wielded the lack of affordable housing against immigrants, saying "Illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country." This, of course, echoes his boss in a number of related themes. The politics of scarcity is about closing doors, protecting America’s historically dominant hierarchies, and preventing and rolling back just about any and all change. Actual scarcity —think the shortage of housing, strained energy grids, income inequality, etc.—are the conditions that allow for such a politics to arise. In these conditions, all it takes is a charismatic leader placing the blame on a “them” and some people will start to follow.
But scarcity also showed up on the Democratic ticket, just in different ways: first with President Biden suggesting he was the only candidate who could beat Trump, his underlying implication being there was a severe scarcity of other candidates who could. Vice President Harris was handed a crappy situation as a result; in the eleventh hour, no less, but then largely campaigned on protecting the system that is partially to blame for real-world scarcity in the first place. Or, as Klein and Thompson write:
“Liberals might detest the language that Trump and Vance use to demonize immigrants. But blue America practices its own version of scarcity politics. Zoning regulations in liberal states and cities that restrict housing supply have increased costs far more than the recent influx of immigrants. These restrictions exacerbated an affordability crisis that was harnessed by the right. Thus, the mistakes of liberals contributed to the rise of illiberalism.” (208)
The 2024 election was a choice between two models of scarcity, surely one of which was better and less scarce than the other, but this choice all the same. Scarcity really does seem to be more alluring than abundance in this moment, so much so that people will even vote against their own interests and well-being, while others feel like imaging a more fair and just future isn’t possible because the threat at hand needs to be defended against. Sure, we shouldn’t discount the roles ideology, misinformation, and algorithms play in all of this, but it seems unwise to brush off the frustrations brought on by real scarcity in the lives of real people.
To be fair to all of us, it genuinely is difficult to dream of a better future when we’re so locked into the immediacy of brokenness, which delivers high levels of political and cultural conflict that then feels suffocating. Scarcity is the great killer of imagination and, without imagination, problems big and small can’t be solved. The fruits of scarcity are abundant in American life today, from some of the larger problems mentioned above —like income inequality— to nonprofits stretching pennies as needs rise and donors recede, to families struggling to make ends meet to faith and civic institutions seeing dwindling numbers of members.
This brings us back to the beginning. Trumpism does not offer a positive vision for America’s future; if anything, it offers a worse form of what we already have: higher inequality, higher political combat, and an even murkier, more uncertain picture of what our shared future looks like. Again, we are already seeing this truth mere months into the administration, with the economy slowing down, prices creeping up again, and corruption run rampant. Abundance is a political book, as such, Klein and Thompson arrive at the conclusion that Democrats should embrace a politics of abundance and back it up with real policy changes where they have power. But this begs the question: what happens when power is standing in the way?
Abundance as a positive vision that confronts power
If you’ve heard anything about Abundance, odds are you’ve seen that Klein and Thompson have caused quite a kerfuffle. There are a lot of folks who seem genuinely excited about what the authors propose. There are also a lot of people who are less than thrilled, deeply unhappy even. And many of them are on the political left.
At first glance that may seem odd. But what makes Abundance so highly controversial for some people is that the limitations on building things we need and restrictions on the government were often created by the left. Again, it wasn’t malicious, and in the past many rules and regulations were good and helpful in a myriad of important ways. But some of these limits are still core to specific interest groups inside the Democratic Party coalition, while others think Abundance skirts around deeper problems or is too corporate-friendly.
Some of these criticisms and worries are certainly understandable and valid. Abundance felt to me like a book crafted to start a conversation about, well, what a healthy politics of abundance could look like. The authors offer neither detailed answers on every scarcity we face today, nor do they spend much time exploring how a politics of Abundance can dovetail on other approaches to problems that are needed. Klein had two critics who represent some of these different views on his show for a nuanced conversation (see above video). I encourage you to watch it if you want to dive into the nitty gritty; but, getting back to what this book is even about, the authors write:
“Changing the processes that make building and inventing hard now requires confrontations with whether the systems liberals have built really reflect the ends they've sought. Much that was designed to foster grassroots participation has been captured by incumbents and special interests. It can be difficult, in a raucous town meeting, to look around and remember who is not there: the mother working two jobs, the young family who couldn't afford the apartment they so badly wanted to move into. ‘This is what democracy looks like’ is a common chant at protests, but what democracy should look like is a devilishly hard question to answer.
What we are proposing is less a set of policy solutions than a new set of questions around which our politics should revolve. What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?” (216)
There’s plenty of room here for good faith debate, but there is also a type of criticism out there that feels less than helpful, such as the ones suggesting Abundance doesn’t address…insert pet issue here. That’s bound to frustrate anyone who is open to new ideas about how to get out of the downward spiral the United States is currently in. What these types of criticisms do accomplish, I think, is exposing just how much some special interest groups are willing to fight to protect their influence and power. Jonathan Chait wrote eloquently about this in The Atlantic, so I won’t rehash the dynamics here, but simply share a sampling from his article that shows power is likely at the heart of such criticisms:
“Whether or not this strategy has actually built power—the evidence from Biden’s presidency is discouraging—it remains foundational to the party’s activist superstructure. The progressive movement seeks to maintain solidarity among its component groups, expecting each to endorse the positions taken by the others.
Much of the most vociferous opposition to the abundance agenda has zeroed in on its betrayal of this principle. The Roosevelt Institute’s Todd Tucker attacked Ezra Klein on X for his ‘survivor island approach to coalitions—first unions and Dems team up to vote enviros off the island, and then Dems turn on labor.’ David Sirota, a left-wing journalist, complained, ‘Abundance Libs are insisting the big problem isn’t corporate power & oligarchs, it’s zoning laws & The Groups? Come on.’ Austin Ahlman, a researcher at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly advocacy organization, mused, ‘You have to wonder whether the Abundance faction stuff would have landed better if the proponents had not laid the groundwork for it by first broadsiding every other organized constituency in the democratic tent.’”
I have to admit, reading knee-jerk defensiveness like this makes me wonder if some critics in this vein even read the book. I’m not active in Democratic Party politics —I’m just a guy in Tennessee who is deeply alarmed and frustrated by the state or our country— but I mostly lean to the left and pretty much always vote blue. I’m also one of the many American voters who has little faith in the Democratic Party as an institution and coalition. Brittle responses to new ideas and recognizing real challenges is one of the main reasons why.
It’s more helpful to see Abundance as an equal complement to some of these other priorities. For example, anti-trust actions (i.e. breaking up colossal companies like Google and Amazon that stifle innovation and deliver flatness) and preventing abuses of power and corruption do not have to be at odds with an abundance agenda. One could even argue they benefit each other. This is only a zero-sum game if we make it one. Will a politics of abundance require some level of sacrifice across the board, from special interest groups to politicians to communities to families? I don’t see how it couldn’t, but maybe that’s hard to embrace because of the politics of scarcity we now live in. I think it’s completely understandable that a lot of people feel overwhelmed right now and are asking, in various ways, how much more do I have to give for something to finally get better?
Politically, the abundance agenda does provide a positive vision of the future that can be wielded against Trumpism. MAGA Republicans are constantly screeching at us that we all need to make do with less, even as they defund scientific research, restrict bringing more energy to the grid, cripple governing institutions that provide needed services through arbitrary purges and new restrictions, and drive up the national debt, all in service to making the wealthiest even more wealthy. This is a completely uninspiring vision for America. It’s as weak as it is wretched. Abundance can be a real alternative. Perhaps it can be the start of a movement that both recognizes government needs to be reformed, not destroyed, and provides an electoral path to seeing those reforms come to life at the federal, state, and local levels.
The theological implications of Abundance
I know Abundance is not a Christian book, but several of its themes feel adjacent, at least to the better angels of the Christian faith. Genesis 1-3 contains one of my favorite stories in Scripture. The creation narratives invite us into a millennia-spanning conversation about who God is, who we are, where we come from, and where are we going. We’re also pushed to ask deeper questions about why things often feel so broken, while receiving a desire to return to the metaphorical Garden of Eden, a place of unfathomable abundance. It’s the ancient literary genre of myth at its finest.
Reading Abundance, I couldn’t help but think about Eden. The book opens with its own Eden-like imagery about what the year 2050 could look like if we start getting more things right than wrong today: near-limitless energy that is clean, a restored environment and clean air, scientific breakthroughs that have led to healthier lives, better relationships with our vocations…the list goes on. It’s not a perfect future, but it is one that is more whole, more healthy, and more generous. It’s also more human, a future in which the increasing absence of scarcity has even given way to less political turmoil:
“The world has changed. Not just the virtual world, that dance of pixels on our screens. The physical world, too: its houses, its energy, its infrastructure, its medicines, its hard tech. How different this era is from the opening decades of the twenty-first century, which unspooled a string of braided crises. A housing crisis. A financial crisis. A pandemic. A climate crisis. Political crises. For years, we accepted homelessness and poverty and untreated disease and declining life expectancy. For years, we knew what we needed to build to alleviate the scarcities so many faced and create the opportunities so many wanted, and we simply didn't build it. For years, we failed to invent and implement technology that would make the world cleaner, healthier, and richer. For years, we constrained our ability to solve the most important problems. Why?” (3-4)
The human desire to return to something like Eden is one the strongest underlying themes of the biblical story. I fear in much of Americanized Christianity we’ve lost sight of this, that we’ve embraced a theology of scarcity instead. Throughout Abundance, my mind drifted to just how often a scarcity mindset shows up in church life here in the American South. We speak of God’s abundance, but we organize and plan like we are staving off collapse. We pray for resurrection while investing in a malformed stewardship that seeks self-preservation and the prevention of change. We say we want community even as we pursue frictionless relationships that end in the collective flatness, and a hum of anxiety. “Church business” takes priority, and having the right beliefs far outweighs one’s actions, stripping the Christian faith of its true power to see transformative change in the world.
While we struggle in these areas today, Christianity has long been blessed with prophetic voices calling us home. Writing for Religion News Service on the recent passing of scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann, Michael DeLashmutt says:
“As they read more broadly in Brueggemann’s corpus, my students are drawn to his diagnosis of our cultural captivity to what he called the ‘myth of scarcity,’ the belief that there is not enough to go around, and that we therefore need to hoard, compete and fear. Brueggemann called this a ‘demonic force’ that deforms our imaginations and our economics alike. Against this, he held up the biblical vision of abundance — a God who provides manna in the wilderness and invites Sabbath rest as resistance to empire.”
The reality is we already live in a world in which there is enough food and medicine for all —and the means to get both wherever they need to go— that famine and many illnesses should already be no more. Political choice and a lack of imagination are the only barriers. This applies to so many other problems in our world and country today, too. Even though living conditions were worse in the time Jesus walked the earth, he understood choice and a lack of imagination have always been core to all social problems, and the story of Eden weighed heavily on his own ministry. In The Naked Now, Franciscan friar Richard Roar writes:
If certitude, predictability, and perfect order were so important, Jesus would have come in a time of digital recorders and cameras, and he would have at least written his ideas down somewhere- and more clearly! He would have described his task as the establishing of archives instead of a sprawling banquet of rich food and wine, as he consistently did. He said, "I have come that you might have life, and a very abundant life at that." (John10:10)
How did we ever get correct rational ideas confused with an abundant life? This happens perhaps to folks who are unwilling to let go of their attachment to their images of themselves, the world, and God. They will not let go of their attachments for a living relationship. "The old wine is good enough," they say (Luke 5:39), and so they miss out on the great banquet that all the mystics, the prophets, and Jesus describe. (See Isaiah 25:6-7, 55:1-2, John 2:1-12, and most of Luke 14.) Surely God does not exist so that we can think correctly about Him - or Her. Amazingly and wonderfully, like all good parents, God desires instead the flourishing of what God created and what God loves - us ourselves. Ironically, we flourish more by learning from our mistakes and changing than by a straight course that teaches us nothing. (97)
While both could be applied to some of the problems with the less than helpful critiques of Abundance above, I mostly find myself wondering what would happen if our churches embraced a theology and culture of abundance, if we really believed God had our best interests and a deep desire for us to thrive at heart. Perhaps taking some of the small kinds of questions Klein and Thompson ask and applying them to our own churches could be beneficial. What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to do that should be easy? What theology do we need that we do not yet have? What unhealthy theology or cultural influences do we cling to? Are there any preventing us from loving our neighbors and, if so, why have we not jettisoned them yet?
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is the magic of Abundance. It’s an invitation to imagine again, to question what we’ve accepted as reality itself. This can be paradigm-shifting; as such, some find hope in questions like these, while others feel fear. Perhaps for the Christian, Abundance can help us understand that one of the best ways to love and honor God in this life is to always be pursuing the coming of a new Eden, as seen in the beautiful imagery of Revelation 21:
“And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’”
Closing Thoughts
I find Klein and Thompson’s framework of abundance vs. scarcity to be a helpful, portable lens to see different contexts through. Writing is how I process most things and, despite the length of this review, there’s plenty more I could say about Abundance because of it. I’ll spare you though.
So where to end? Something that seems appropriate came to mind in the last chapter, entitled Toward Abundance. It’s a scene from The West Wing in which two Presidential aides, Toby and Josh, and one of their assistants, Donna, are stranded in rural Indiana after being left behind by the Presidential motorcade. The two-part episode is appropriately named 20 Hours in America and follows their bumbling journey back to Washington, highlighted by run-ins with a diverse group of Americans, as well as some humorous moments when people find out they work in the White House.
The trio eventually end up in a hotel waiting on a delayed flight. Toby and Josh stumble into Matt Kelley at the bar, an Average American of sorts who encapsulates the struggles they’ve seen on their journey. While at first reluctant to talk, Toby can’t help but be drawn in by Matt’s affability. Here’s the scene.
“It should be hard. I like that it’s hard…but it should be a little easier. Just a little easier; because that difference is everything.”
We live in a time when elected Republicans are running away from town halls or refusing to meet constituents altogether. A time when an older generation of elected Democrats are having a difficult time letting go of power and failing to pass the torch to a new generation. We see similar dynamics playing out across American life, as important institutions we have taken for granted falter and crumble. I imagine most people reading this already felt a bit like Matt Kelley before things went as far off the rails as they have now, in some form or fashion. I do, at least.
Some folks roll their eyes at The West Wing because they feel the politics of the show are too much to wish for. Time may prove the critics right, but I think it’s a mistake not to at least try to aspire to such a politics. I fear we no longer aspire at all, like we’ve decided our noxious flatness is locked in, like all we can do is look down and worry about our place in the dirt.
I wonder what would happen if we decided to look up and begin pursuing abundance in its myriad of ways, in our own communities, failing faith and civic institutions, and national politics. Maybe abundance begins by simply extending a helping hand and sharing what we have. Maybe a starting place is talking to the stranger at a bar who looks a little down. Perhaps instead of believing those who say we can’t do this or that’s never going to happen, we’d get further if we imagined a different future and then get caught trying to make it reality. Even if we fail, we’ll likely have made things just a little easier for somebody. Surely that difference will mean everything to them.
The ideas Klein and Thompson present are worthy of good-faith debate. But writing off their proposals in cynicism or because the authors don’t address a pet concern is, frankly, part of the reason why we’re in the mess we’re in today. At some point we’ve all been right and we’ve all been wrong. We should take responsibility for both. We live in a very different world than the one of just 10 years ago. New ideas and new faces are required to lead us into it. Is what Klein and Thompson offer the best path forward? That’s for all of us to decide.
What I do know is Abundance is the only positive vision for our country I’ve seen in a very long time. Being against something will never be enough. We have to be for something, too. With so much of American life right now not for anything —including life outside politics— Abundance seems like a good place to start figuring some things out.
About Me
I explore faith, church culture, and formation in the American South from my hometown of Memphis, TN. I’m an institutionalist who believes the means are just as important as the ends. Everything on this site is an expression of my faith and love for the Church.
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