By Mike Koetting October 28, 2025
I’ve been thinking that Abundance, the Ezra Klein-Derek Thompson book, has the right idea but the focus is too narrow.
The Klein-Thompson book starts with the observation that scarcity is a choice. It then proceeds to assume that the way out of the scarcity trap is to make it easier to create more stuff so that all may experience the abundance of what our technology can produce. This clearly has an element of truth. They correctly identify bottlenecks in our current production of social goods and they are right that there is no political appetite for “degrowth.” So power to their suggestions.
That said, however, they miss the urgency of the situation. A large chunk of the population is furious. Trying to remove obstacles to creating greater supply of desired goods, while laudable, is simply not a solution commensurate with the degree of anger in the body politic. I think Michael Hirschorn, in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, has a better handle on where we are: “Trumpism is more than politics. It’s an emotional gas-main explosion, from people who felt unheard, patronized, left behind.”
The Problem
Start with the fact that the United States routinely does poorly on comparisons of happiness among countries. Hardly anyone pays any attention to these comparisons. In part, because Americans can’t imagine things being too much different and it’s easier to just dismiss the comparison on the grounds that other countries are too different to be relevant. (“Well…they’re so homogenous” is a common blow-off response, as if having diversity were somehow innately opposed to happiness.)
Even if the specifics of these comparisons don’t work exactly, there is something straightforward about thinking of political situations as a measure of the general happiness of the population. Does anyone really believe the extreme degree of political alienation in the United States is unrelated to the fact that the United States predictably ranks near the bottom of the happiness index?
This in turn, I believe, is related to scarcity. Probably not absolute scarcity– on many measures Americans should be happy with their economic situation. But the scarcity reflected in how many Americans feel threatened by the uncertainty of their situations. The sense they have to work too hard to get there, that the well-off get more well-off at their expense, and that they are only a step away from the precipice.
Sources: CBS News Cornell Medical School CNN Newsweek CBS News Peterson Foundation National Institute on Retirement Security
Fear of things falling apart has particularly toxic effects. It makes people fearful and fear causes people to behave badly. The degree of unhappiness with this situation is indeed the gas build-up to which Michael Hirschorn refers.
Direction of Solution
America is the wealthiest civilization that has ever existed. There is something fundamentally wrong when, despite a reasonably good economy, a large portion of the population feels that their well-being is under constant threat.
This is the problem of American abundance. It is not being shared. And the elite pretend that the degree of social precarity is somehow virtuous.
Restoring a sense of protection in America will be a Herculean effort. The tolerance of scarcity is woven into every part of the American political economy. No wonder Klein and Thompson want to approach this by simply building over the existing structure, like a homeowner adding a room to avoid facing problems in the core structure.
The difficulty of achieving a less precarious society will not, however, keep voters from demanding it. It is why people are supporting Zohran Mamdani in New York City and is why so many supported Donald Trump. The latter of course represents a badly mistaken idea of what would improve personal situations. But the fact that so many voters misread Trump’s intention does not diminish the popularity of what he was selling. Make America Great Again is nothing more than a promise to recreate the comfort of a time that is deeply missed, even if it never fully existed.
Leadership of the Democratic Party—which is extremely lukewarm around Mamdani– is making a different mistake. It seems to think that somehow moderating aspirations will win over voters. This is on balance wrong. It will preserve some of their voters, but at the cost of a larger portion of the electorate.
I am acutely sympathetic to the problem of leaders who look down the road and ask how various proposals could actually be carried out. It makes sense to be leery of promises you don’t know how you would keep. But the most necessary change is achievable. That is a sense that we are really going to tackle these fundamental issues in a communal way, even if—perhaps especially if—it means offending corporate elites. This is necessary not just for electoral reasons, but because our society is fundamentally out of line. Societies can only withstand so many gas explosions.
What’s perhaps encouraging about the current situation is that there may be opportunities for a Progressive-Populist coalition. Looking back over American history, some of the most favorable and lasting changes in American society were made with this alliance–at the beginning of the 20th Century and then again in the New Deal programs.
The protections from these programs have worn away over time. People are again becoming desperate to feel a greater degree of economic security. And a sense that their lives have as much value as the richest. I don’t think taking the slow road of supply abundance is quick enough. It should be done. But society also needs to put in place a broad set of limits on corporations and big finance and a greatly enhanced safety net that softens people’s fears and resentment. To do this will require broad, populist support. I don’t know how to exactly shape this package, but I am pretty confident it won’t be by being either too careful about core proposals or by trying to solve problems a large portion of the electorate doesn’t care about.
Maybe it is easier than it seems. Trump himself ran on cartoon versions of these goals. There is now an increasing disruption in the Republican Party between those who hold the old Republican orthodoxy of making all government the enemy and those who take a more sanguine view of the role of government. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, surprised many people with her full-throated support of the Democrats’ willingness to shut down government over the Obamacare subsidies. Other Republicans, particularly those more recently elected, are also voicing more support for government programs designed to bolster lower, working and middle class Americans. While there is a core MAGA base committed to anti-progressive ideas, some of Trump’s populist supporters are beginning to wonder where their true interests lie.
It is becoming daily clearer that trying to see the world through the lens of Democrat vs Republican is really clouding our view. We don’t yet have a good alternative for systematizing our understandings, but we need to be realistic that a large portion of the electorate is rejecting both political parties because, it seems, neither party can give them the security they are looking for. It is true that Democrats would have come a lot closer if they had not been systematically obstructed by Republicans. But that’s insider-baseball to most voters. They aren’t getting what they need and they want it. They will vote not by party line, but in favor of which candidate seems to best understand what they need and commit to getting the country there. In fairness, that’s not a bad strategy—although it’s better if they have a realistic assessment of the intent of various promises.
At the end of the day, it comes back to what makes people happy. An interview with a Finnish man about why their country was rated first for happiness, summarized it well.
Really. These are not beyond the reach of the richest country on the planet.
Between Hell and High Water 