The Abundance “Movement” is Trickle Down Repackaged

If you believe Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is about effective government, or that Trump University was about educating people, I’ve got an Abundant Network to sell you.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book “Abundance” has thrilled neoliberals from coast to coast. According to its publisher, “Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.” The problem is there is nothing paradigm-shifting in this book especially when it comes to housing. Calling for more privatization, deregulation, and trickle down economics is calling for more of the failed status quo.

The authors argue that liberal government has failed by over-regulating, not that liberal government has failed by privatizing the provision of basic human needs like housing. Our system provides an abundance of profits for corporations and billionaires, rather than abundance of housing, health care, child care, food, or transit for those in need. A recent Wall Street Journal article found that the top 10% of earners accounted for half of all spending. “The finances of the well-to-do have never been better, their spending never stronger and the economy never more dependent on that group,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who oversaw the analysis.

The authors’ discussion of housing is remarkably superficial, parroting without analysis debunked trickle down theories. It culminates in this passage:

“Abundance reorients politics around a fresh provocation: Can we solve our problems with supply? Many valuable questions bloom from this deceptively simple prompt. If there are not enough homes, can we make more? If not, why not?” (p. 181)

The analysis conflates all types of housing, failing to distinguish between the supply of affordable versus unregulated housing. It also characterizes focusing on new housing supply as a “fresh” idea when it’s been the guiding principle of American housing policy for decades. 

The authors never address the fact that 15 million homes in the United States sit empty while an estimated 770,000 people are homeless on any given night. That’s nearly twenty empty homes in America for every person with no home. To discuss supply only in reference to deregulating new construction, and ignore the supply of vacant homes and market interventions that promote affordability, is a telling choice.

The truth is there is a shortage of affordable housing, especially in expensive cities. There is an abundance of market rate housing which isn’t affordable to most working class people, and no matter how much of it gets built, the prices just seem to rise, and much of the new construction sits empty in expensive cities like San Francisco. 

Notably absent from the book – which enthusiastically champions deregulation and zoning to address the CA housing crisis – is any recognition of the things that actually work to lower housing costs for working people. Rent control, community land trusts, limited equity coops, subsidized housing, public housing, inclusionary units – all of these came about from the kind of activism the authors don’t even acknowledge, likely because they haven’t talked with the activists and communities of color driving these solutions. These are the strategies – like rent control – that have lowered costs and transferred billions from the abundant bank accounts of billionaires to working people.

Also absent from the book is any discussion of real estate speculation, commodification of housing, and corporate consolidation in the ownership of homes. Nor do the authors acknowledge the real estate industry’s funding and control of both political parties and how that blocks interventions that would bring down the rent and make housing more affordable. The exclusive focus on supply rather than affordability shows an inexplicable faith in for-profit markets that ignores over half a century of urban experience.

This selective focus is not new to anyone familiar with the discourse in the San Francisco Bay Area. For a decade the so-called YIMBY movement has partnered with real estate billionaires to attack progressives, tenants unions, workers, and communities of color, to convince people that the answer to the housing crisis is deregulation. They argue that if we just unleash developers, and remove affordable housing requirements, zoning restrictions, prevailing wage commitments, and environmental review, the free market will bring prices down to create affordable homes for all. That approach hasn’t worked, nor was it ever designed to. Prices have soared even after barrier after barrier has been removed. The Executive Director of their local lobbying group recently admitted before San Francisco's Planning Commission that private developers will only build when housing prices go up. That’s the problem with privatizing something as important as housing.

YIMBY is loved by white well-off liberals, mostly men, and corporate media, and reviled by communities of color, labor unions, tenant activists, and progressives. Perhaps that’s why two years ago they rebranded, this time as “Abundance Movement.” 

In 2023, tech CEOs, including a founder of CA YIMBY, launched “Abundant SF” to influence San Francisco elections. They then spun off multiple PACs. The two biggest donors to SF’s Abundance Network were former Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg ($1.2M) and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen ($900K). The groups successfully took over the SF Democratic Party in 2024, championing policies like deregulating luxury housing, arresting homeless people, and dismantling life-saving harm reduction programs.  

Liberals who argue that more privatization, lower taxes on the rich, and less regulation, will bring abundance for all got us into the current predicament. As we’ve learned over and over, the benefits do not trickle down. The political establishment makes sure corporate landlords, private equity, and tech oligarchs eat first, with only scraps for working people. The results have been horrific – homelessness, massive income inequality, skyrocketing costs for food, housing, education, and other necessities. 

The billionaires funding the “Abundant Network” know this. They seek an abundance of profits for themselves, at the expense of everyone else. But they can’t sell that. That’s why they take a poll tested word – Abundance! – and use that as the Trojan Horse to push more trickle down economics. Seeing national figures like Klein who have a major platform echoing industry talking points is a PR win for the real estate industry, but it’s disappointing to anyone who cares about housing justice and homes for all. 

The “Abundance movement” is the repackaging and rebranding of the status quo, trickle-down economics. Don’t buy it. If you want something better than the fascism conservatives are forcing on us, and the milquetoast response neoliberals are mounting as they move further and further to the right, it’s time to reject catchy but vapid slogans like “abundance” and build a society structured around helping everyday people succeed, instead of making money for wealthy corporations and billionaires.