On “The Ezra Klein Show,” the Opinion columnist argues that government inefficiency is the key obstacle to achieving progressive goals, and that fixing it is the first step toward a radically different, more abundant society.
“If the argument is that we have a horrendous bureaucracy, absolutely correct. It is terrible,” Klein says, reflecting on Senator Bernie Sanders’s frustrations. He recounts Sanders’s struggle to build community health clinics in Vermont, funded by the Affordable Care Act in 2010 but still not completed in 2026.
Klein insists that the left should be the angriest about this dysfunction, because its ideology depends on government’s ability to do big, good things. He distinguishes between two versions of abundance: one that is merely “good government” — efficient and effective — and another that is a vision of a world “quite unlike our own.”
That vision includes firefighters in San Francisco or Brooklyn able to afford homes in the cities they protect, health care without fear of cost, stability against rising rents, and economic security. It also encompasses clean energy abundance and AI that serves the public rather than replacing workers.
“If all abundance does is push forward zoning reforms for housing, that would be good, but it’s not a vision,” Klein says. “It’s supposed to be creating some different world than the one we live in.”