Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Sohaib Nasim contributed to this commentary.   A shorter version was published by Project Syndicate.

November 2, 2025 —  In search of an alternative vision to MAGA that might appeal to common-sense working Americans, some Democrats have rallied around the word “abundance.”  That is the title of a recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, touted as a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting revelation.

To begin, let me say that Ezra Klein is one of my favorite columnists and podcasters.

To the extent that abundance can be used as an effective political slogan, I am all ears.  In its favor, “abundance” is short enough to fit onto a bumper sticker, the word is neither too common in speech nor too uncommon, and it sounds like something we should all want.  It could fulfill the purpose of Democrats admitting past mistakes, which at this point is de rigueur if they are to develop an effective political strategy.  But abundance seems to me an arrow that is not particularly well-aimed.

1. Obstacles to building

The basic critique of America’s inability to build is on-target: it is absurd that major, socially beneficial projects take decades to complete. California’s high-speed rail is one huge example (if we grant that it is to be built at all).  About $14.4 billion has been spent over 17 years, yet only 60 miles of track have been completed.  Klein and Thompson point out that during the same period, China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail.

There are more examples wherever you look.  Renewable energy and transmission projects get stuck in endless permitting.  The same with housing construction.  On this point, Klein and Thompson are right—the pendulum has swung too far toward procedural gridlock. They are also right that liberals should confess to being partly responsible, when favoring regulations that, even if well-intentioned, make building prohibitively hard.

Of course, some restrictions are necessary. Most Americans agree with the need to protect national parks, for example. Cities should retain zoning powers to prevent locating factories or high-rise buildings beside existing homes.

Parenthetically, it is no defense to say, “those NIMBY people are just interested in the market value of their houses.”   It shouldn’t really matter whether a family wants to keep the view it already has for their own pleasure, or whether it is a future family to which the house will eventually be sold that would lose the benefit if the monstrosity were built next door.

But aesthetic and community concerns should not become blanket vetoes. The real challenge is to achieve a good balance among competing objectives efficiently—without letting decade-long lawsuits become the main tool of compromise.  In other words, it is not how much regulation, so much as finding the right kind of regulation, which allows maximization with respect to both goals.   It was a sign of the times when California Governor Gavin Newsom on October 10 signed a bill to make permitting easier in the case of high-density housing to be located within a half-mile of a major rail station.

 

2. The issue is scarcity, not abundance 

Where I diverge from the “abundance” movement is less on substance than on framing.  The term is evocative but imprecise.

The real issue is that our political and regulatory systems choke the timely creation of needed goods and infrastructure. Klein and Thompson are really arguing for competent capacity: a society that can plan, approve, and execute projects without paralysis. That’s a worthy goal, but “abundance” may not be the clearest way to convey it.

Any world view that ignores the centrality of scarcity is unlikely to succeed.  But “abundance” is the opposite of scarcity.  There is only a finite amount of land, especially in certain parts of the country like water-bound San Francisco or Manhattan, that are already densely populated.  The question is how to make the best use of it, as between parkland and factories, or between single-family housing and high-rises, not to pretend that land is abundant.

Nor should the point be limited to questions regarding building.  That sector is just one instance of a much broader phenomenon.  Similar pathologies are rife in air travel, health insurance, water rights, banking and finance, and countless other microeconomic policy issues.   Often, there exist more efficient rules and institutions that could do a better job than the status quo of satisfying the competing interests.

 

3. In praise of textbooks

The more useful framework comes from textbook economics: optimization to attain objectives subject to specified constraints, identifying tradeoffs, pricing externalities, and designing institutions that align incentives instead of stifling them.   It is worth noting that many textbooks define economics as the study of behavior with respect to scarcity.

Textbook economics will never be a rallying cry, but its logic—clear thinking about opportunity costs, efficiency, and welfare—remains the best compass for policymaking. It reminds us that economic progress depends on reconciling competing interests through sound rules and predictable governance, not slogans or wishful thinking. The task is not to eliminate regulation, but to design better regulation—rules that correct market failures without freezing the market itself.

In that sense, I share the authors’ diagnosis. America has lost the ability to deliver. My quarrel is only with the label and the idea that a political movement can be built around it. “Abundance” is rhetorically uplifting but analytically imprecise. The real task is coping with scarcity, to restore institutional competence—to build quickly, fairly, and sustainably, guided by the balanced reasoning of textbook economics.

 

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This post written by Jeffrey Frankel.