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An Abundance of Credulity - The American Prospect

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In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism, two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman calls it a “cultural aversion to power.” Both books ask a pertinent question: Why doesn’t the government do big, bold things, quickly, to address the pressing issues of our time? We have an abundance of viewpoints and veto points, they argue, but a shortage of affordable housing and transmission lines. Something’s got to give. The unstated question, of course, is who must give. The problems the authors identify are real, but they largely ignore who benefits from prolonging them. Their vision is of a government that’s more responsive to the public’s needs, but their proposal is to remove already inadequate levers for accountability in political decision-

This article appears in the April 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . Abundance By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson Avid Reader Press Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back By Marc J. Dunkelman PublicAffairs In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism , two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance , Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works , Marc Dunkelman c

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