Welcome to The Ink Book Club!
Join us today for our first discussion of Abundance
Join us this afternoon, Wednesday, May 7, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we’ll be hosting a Live meeting of The Ink Book Club with Leigh Haber. We’ll talk about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, go over some ideas, and talk about how the club will run. To join and watch, download the Substack app. You’re still welcome if you haven’t done all the reading, and we hope to see you all there!
First of all, WELCOME TO THE INK BOOK CLUB! This is a passion project for us here, as book nerds who care deeply about the direction of our country, its people, and the state of our planet. Few books out there have set off as vibrant a debate among pundits and readers alike as Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, our first book club pick, and debate has already begun in our chat!
Over a thousand of you have signed up to participate in our conversation around Abundance, so it’s time to get started. There’s a lot to unpack about the so-called “abundance agenda,” and whether what the authors propose does offer a realistic blueprint for a post-Trump era.
What is the abundance agenda? We suggest that it’s a way to synthesize the left’s concern for the welfare of people with the recognition that we have to begin to cut through regulations that stifle growth, framed by a belief in America’s ability to realize its own promised greatness. They start from the notion that progressives — even if they have the best intentions — have been unable to tell the story that can motivate Americans to take up this project, so they’ve taken it upon themselves.
But that greatness has to be of a practical kind: ensuring that we offer world-class transportation and other services; that our urban centers are clean and safe; that there is widespread prosperity and affordable housing for all; that efficient vertical farms supply food with minimal impact on the environment; that we work to provide clean energy and water and address the needs of all living creatures and the health of our planet; that we are continue to make enormous strides in curing disease and ensure health care that is accessible and cheap.
That’s the utopia the authors believe can emerge by the year 2050 if we follow their proposed plan, and the results are outlined in the book’s introduction — a bold statement of utopian dreams.
The question is, as Samuel Moyn asked in his review of the book in the New York Times, “Can Democrats learn to dream big again?” And it’s a question that demands an answer, for reasons that are all too clear now. Klein and Thompson warned (they wrote the book last year) that if “liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen, they need to offer the fruits of effective government.” Now that this country has turned to that false promise, they believe their book offers a roadmap out of the current crisis.
Now, that’s harder than it sounds, and clearly, Democrats have had a hard time convincing people of the value of those fruits even when they have offered them. We’ve talked about it a lot in this newsletter.
The book has gotten plenty of pushback: it’s been called elitist, naive, and accused of not taking into account the monumental shift that was brewing throughout the 2024 presidential campaign and has transformed the country in the first 100-plus days of the second Trump regime.
Some critics have written that the issues we now face, from housing shortages and infrastructure failures to crises in energy, innovation, and income inequality have to do with the neoliberal wave that swept out the old “managerial capitalism” and replaced it with “shareholder capitalism.” The result: an economy that prized short-term returns over slower long-term growth, a period of monopolization and corporate consolidation, the shrinking of union power and the welfare state, privatization, and deregulation. The kinds of problems that get in the way of big dreams.
Many economists think that neoliberalism has run its course. But what comes after is a lot less clear. The right-wing backlash we’re experiencing right now is one answer. But it’s not the only one.
But what Klein and Thompson provide is a narrative history of how we got here that doesn’t feel so overwhelmingly complicated that meaningful change will feel forever out of reach. So they set their agenda, and then move purposefully, chapter by chapter through each necessary step or phase: “Grow,” “Build,” “Govern,” “Invent,” “Deploy.” And each chapter provides examples of where Klein and Thompson think we’ve gone wrong and how to get back on track.
On Sunday, we will post a brief discussion guide with suggestions on tackling each chapter of Abundance, along with some links to books and articles by others that support, challenge, or even contradict the authors’ premises.
So join us today at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Leigh will be going live to tell you more about the Book Club, find out from you what you’d like from our book club discussions, and — for those of you who’ve started reading, or reading about the book — talk about your initial thoughts on Abundance. The call will be open to Ink subscribers.
Some questions to consider beforehand:
Do you agree that progressives bear some of the responsibility for the voter dissatisfaction that led us to a second Trump era?
If regulations on construction, transportation, and the energy infrastructure, and scientific research have hobbled progress, how do we lift them without doing more damage to the climate or sacrificing our commitments to diversity and accessibility?
The environmental and consumer protection movements are in part to blame, in Klein and Thompson’s eyes, for some of the impediments to growth cited in the book. Do we need to give up on these causes to reignite innovation and achieve abundance? Or is there a middle ground?
We’re excited to get started and to hear about what you’ve been getting out of the book. Looking forward to seeing you all at 12:30!
Join us this afternoon, Wednesday, May 7, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we’ll be hosting a Live meeting of The Ink Book Club with Leigh Haber. We’ll talk about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, go over some ideas, and talk about how the club will run. You’re still welcome if you haven’t done all the reading, and we hope to see you all there!
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
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I can’t get in. No link. No alert. Damn
I haven't read the book but did read Klein's March NYT Opinion piece. One of the things that stayed with me was his comparison of home prices in Texas and California. He stated, as if the virtue of this is self-evident, that Houston has no building code and it's "easy" to build there. The NYT has reported repeatedly on the widespread devastation from flooding suffered in the greater Houston area both in and beyond the official flood zones. A UC Davis report cited "runaway development and lack of hydrologic planning." I hope Klein's book is thoughtfully written, but this aspect of the Opinion piece struck me as glib.