Source : the age
By Andrew Leigh
POLITICS
Abundance
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Simon & Schuster, $45
In the 1930s, the US built the Empire State Building in 13 months. In the 1940s, the Pentagon, headquarters of the Defence Department, was constructed in 16 months. In the 1950s, developers in Levittown, Pennsylvania boasted they could produce a house every 16 minutes.
Yet today, construction has become slower and more expensive. Recent subway extensions in New York have cost billions of dollars per mile. A public toilet in San Francisco cost over a million dollars. US home building has fallen behind population demand, with construction costs largely to blame.
“Why can’t America build like we used to?” is the central question at the heart of Abundance, a new book by New York Times podcast host Ezra Klein and Atlantic commentator Derek Thompson, which argues that a central focus for progressives should be raising wellbeing by creating more for everyone.
The book opens with a heady vision of an abundant society in 2050: clean energy so cheap it’s barely worth metering, shorter working hours, longer holidays, better medicines, quicker commutes, and more affordable homes. The obstacle to these goals, the authors argue, is an abundance of good intentions. They call it “Everything Bagel Liberalism”: too many good things make a bad result. The metaphor lands best with those of us who find the Everything Bagel a confused mess, rather than a culinary marvel.
To see the problem, take the case of San Francisco’s public toilet. Community engagement took six months. The bidding process took another six months. Construction took a further six months. Approvals were required from six government agencies and the local electric utility. From first announcement to first flush took two years and cost US$1.7 million.
Kamala Harris, then the US vice president, is vaccinated against COVID in 2021. Approval of the vaccine proved that it is possible to develop something fast.Credit: AP
Each of these processes is worthy in itself, the authors argue. But collectively, the focus on process rather than outcome has stymied construction. Differences in residential building codes are a major reason why homes are much cheaper in Houston than Los Angeles. As Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern put it in a recent book, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, when everyone has a veto, nothing gets built.
The same arguments apply in other areas. Scientists spend an increasing share of their time filling in grant applications instead of doing research. Administrative costs account for about one-quarter of US healthcare spending. Many regulations make sense individually, the authors note, but collectively, they have reduced the supply of homes, train lines, medical care and breakthrough science.
The authors are especially critical of the degrowth movement, which they argue offers little practical hope – either politically or economically. Few countries have expanded opportunity while shrinking their economies.
Helpfully, Klein and Thompson’s book identifies recent moments in which their country cut through the regulatory thicket to produce speedy results. In 2023, a crucial stretch of Interstate 95, one of the country’s busiest highways, collapsed after a petrol tanker burst into flames. Some thought the rebuild might take months. Pennsylvania’s governor waived some administrative requirements, enlisted trusted contractors, and had union crews working around the clock. The highway reopened in 12 days.
Another success was the production of COVID vaccines. In mid-2020, Operation Warp Speed saw the US government provide about US$10 billion to pharmaceutical companies to accelerate the production of safe and effective vaccines. It helped firms overcome supply bottlenecks, build production facilities, and access skilled labour. Food and Drug Administration approval of the first COVID vaccines, in December 2020, set a record for the fastest vaccine development process in history.
Abundance is anti-gridlock, not anti-government. Klein and Thompson point out that the government is “a plural posing as a singular”, and advocate various ideas for more joined-up government. Streamlining building approval processes, limiting the capacity of opponents to delay affordable housing, and setting targets for housing construction are measures that have been advocated by the growing YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement. The authors also emphasise the value of strengthening government expertise and warn of the dangers of an overreliance on consultants and contractors.
The real joy of reading Abundance is the authors’ call to rekindle their nation’s sense of collective ambition – urging a shift away from a politics of limits toward one animated by moral purpose. Whether building homes, deploying clean energy, or curing disease, Abundance advocates treating government as a vehicle for doing big things: not just protecting the present, but shaping the future.
Andrew Leigh is a federal Labor MP and author of several books, including The Shortest History of Economics.
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