Project Syndicate - Getting Abundance Right

Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan delivers a clear-eyed response to the abundance agenda, pointing readers to a better approach that he has explored extensively.

By Sandeep Vaheesan - March 28, 2025

The abundance agenda, which has gained traction in media and policy circles, offers little beyond what has already been tried and failed. Rather than doubling down on neoliberal dogma, Americans should look to a time in their history when a bold, capable federal government delivered broad-based economic prosperity.

From Elon Musk to proponents of the so-called abundance agenda, influential voices in the United States portray the state as an impediment to prosperity. Musk asserts that the state traps workers in low-productivity jobs, while the abundance agenda’s promoters attack environmental review and zoning rules as bureaucratic obstacles to private investment. The common theme is a state that prevents the emergence of an American golden age defined by plentiful clean energy and affordable housing…

Fundamentally, the abundance agenda dismisses the value of public input. Giving communities a say in infrastructure development can lead to more informed land-use decisions and serve as a democratic check on powerful corporate interests. Instead of being jettisoned, environmental review and zoning should be improved through tailored measures, such as expanding state administrative capacity and directing greater population density toward places with ample health-care, school, and transit capacity.

More broadly, the abundance agenda embodies the failure to confront the pathologies of contemporary capitalism. Simply granting corporations the legal freedom to build by relaxing zoning rules and environmental reviews ignores the fact that today’s corporations place short-term shareholder payouts above long-term objectives and are thus unlikely to invest at the scale and scope necessary to deliver broad-based abundance.

The most effective rebuttal to this anti-statist philosophy is the American experience itself. US economic history includes episodes in which vigorous government action proved crucial for prosperity…

Read more in Project Syndicate here.