The Democratic Party was facing an identity crisis when Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. Just two months later, Democratic media Thinkboiz1 Ezra Klein2 and Derek Thompson3 published Abundance.4
Their theory of the case: We could “solve our problems with supply,” and that to do so, we needed to pursue “a liberalism that builds,” an idea that meant aspiring to “more than redistribution […], more than parceling out the present.” The text of Abundance focuses almost exclusively on examples of government proceduralism and self-defeating obstruction, while at times quoting books like Fully Automated Luxury Communism and even Karl Marx.
There’s just one difference between the productive capacity imagined in Fully Automated Luxury Communism and Abundance: only one of these books sees this vision as compatible with capitalism.
Over the months that followed its publication, an “intra-left” fight emerged between the “populist left” (represented by figures like Bernie Sanders and the DSA) and the “abundance left.” For a while, it looked like Abundance would set the vision for the future of the party. What happened?
Diabolical Lies investigates.
“The ever-expanding morass of complicated Federal regulation imposes massive costs on the lives of millions of Americans, creates a substantial restraint on our economic growth and ability to build and innovate, and hampers our global competitiveness.”
That’s not a quote from Abundance, though, it’s a quote from this executive order:
Anyway!
Media and relevant resources that informed sentiments included in the order mentioned:
“How ‘abundance’ lost the Democratic war of ideas” by Andrew Prokop for Vox (2026)
“New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement” by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis for The American Prospect (2026)
“A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems” by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic (2022)
“Ezra Klein Should Be Honest About the Abundance Movement” by JoeWrote, where the Lex Fridman clip has been pulled from (2025)
“What the ‘Abundance Agenda’ Leaves Out” by Matt Bruenig for Jacobin (2025)
Shot, from Abundance: “American liberalism has measured its successes in how near it could come to the social welfare system of Denmark.”
Chaser, from Hillary Clinton running against Bernie in 2015: “We are not Denmark.”
“The paucity of Abundance” by Luke Savage (2025)
Elon Musk’s Retweet of Ezra’s appearance on John Stewart:
“The Broadband Story Abundance Liberals Like Ezra Klein Got Wrong” by Paul Glastris and Kainoa Lowman for Washington Monthly (2025)
“The Battle for the Democratic Future” by Sam Adler-Bell for New York Magazine (2025)
“The Limits of Abundance” by Alex Bronzini-Vender for American Affairs Journal (2025)
“What’s the Matter with Abundance?” by Malcolm Harris for The Baffler (2025)
“What left-wing critics don’t get about abundance” by David Schleicher for the Niskanen Center (2025)
“The Abundance Debate is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.” by Waleed Shahid for The Nation (2025)
“The Real Path to Abundance” by Sandeep Vaheesan for Boston Review (2025)
“Land-Use Reforms and Housing Costs: Does Allowing for Increased Density Lead to Greater Affordability?” by Christina Plerhoples Stacy, Christopher Davis, Yonah Freemark, Lydia Lo, Graham MacDonald, Vivian Zheng, Rolf Pendall (2023)
“Patience, please. Undoing damage from decades of anti-housing policy in California won’t happen overnight” from the LA Times Editorial Board (2023)
“Supply Constraints Do Not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth Across U.S. Cities” by Schuyler Louie, John A. Mondragon, and Johannes Wieland from the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers series (2025)
“Study finds US does not have housing shortage, but shortage of affordable housing” from Kirk McClure at the University of Kansas (2024), which finds this:
“Our nation’s affordability problems result more from low incomes confronting high housing prices rather than from housing shortages,” McClure said. “This condition suggests that we cannot build our way to housing affordability. We need to address price levels and income levels to help low-income households afford the housing that already exists, rather than increasing the supply in the hope that prices will subside.”
“What We Got Right — and Wrong — in ‘Abundance’” from The Ezra Klein Show (2026)
“An Abundance of Credulity” by Hannah Story Brown for The American Prospect (2025)
“Cross-Tabs: May 2026 Times/Siena National Poll Among Potential Democratic Supporters” from The New York Times (2026)
“Socialists Are Tearing Through the Democratic Party Establishment” by Miles Kampf-Lassin for In These Times (2026)
“DSA Machine Go BRRR” by JoeWrote (2026)
“How Socialism Could Really Work,” a primer on an idea called “market socialism” which I wanted to include in this episode but couldn’t after we hit 3 hours on the book itself lmao
“Political Aspects of Full Employment” by M. Kalecki (1943), an essay which describes how full employment (aka, something we ostensibly want and seek) is actually antithetical to capitalism, another good example of conflicting interests between the “mechanism” and the “goal”
not snark, what are they if not thinkboiz?
famed cutie patootie and subject of caro’s erotic duplex-related dreams
famed enjoyer of parental leave
famed beloved diabolical lies guitar solo
