America’s 21st-century landscape looks pretty bleak:
After decades of strict zoning to prevent urban density, we’re facing a housing shortage. After years of slashing immigration to keep wages high, we don’t have enough workers. Regular off-shoring of manufacturing to control costs has brought us a dire shortage of chips for cars and computers. And despite warnings about climate change, we haven’t created a basic clean energy infrastructure because windmills might mar rural views or kill birds.
An earlier generation’s solutions have become our generation’s nightmares.
In their new book, Abundance, best-selling authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue for a major paradigm shift away from outdated solutions that have mired us in scarcity. They join us to discuss how we can move from a liberalism narrowly focused on protecting and preserving to one that builds and creates abundance.
Ezra Klein rose to prominence as a blogger. After doing so for The American Prospect, he became The Washington Post’s first pure blogger on politics and economics. In 2014, he cofounded the website Vox, which he also edited. Six years later, he joined The New York Times as a columnist and podcast host. He is the author of the best-selling book Why We’re Polarized.
Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter. He is also the author of the best-selling books Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction and On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity. He is the host of the podcast Plain English.