Will the 'Abundance' Agenda Make California Great Again?
Democrats would have a stronger rebuke to Trumpism if civic service in blue states were the national model rather than a laughingstock.
Up until the 1970s, California was a state known for its commitment to boundless opportunities, with the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown governorship reflective of the can-do spirit that drew people here from across the world. Given the degree to which modern California is noted for its ineffectiveness, wastefulness, and regulatory sclerosis, it's difficult to imagine a California that took its Golden State moniker seriously.
Brown "envisioned a future in which economic growth would be driven by a network of state-of-the-art freeways to move people, reservoirs, and canals to capture and transport water and intellectual capital from low-cost institutions of higher education. He sold that vision to the public and, in doing so, as the late historian Kevin Starr wrote, putting California on "the cutting edge of the American experiment," per a Hoover Institution retrospective. The state grew dramatically as a result.
The Brown administration built most of the State Water Project in less time than it would take to complete an Environmental Impact Report these days. California officials still have big dreams, of course, but they are more of the social-engineering variety than the civil-engineering type. Brown built freeways that people actually use, whereas today's big project is a pointless high-speed rail line that's way over budget and unlikely to serve any serious need.
It took 24 years to build a new east span of the Bay Bridge—and it came in at 2,500% over budget. California can't even house its population now, thanks largely to environmental rules, no-growth restrictions, urban-growth boundaries, and other government regulations. Yet California lawmakers show no appetite to reform the biggest impediment, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), except on a piecemeal basis. Many liberals are frustrated, and conservatives now are the ones most likely to tout the Pat Brown era.
But a funny thing is happening as progressives struggle for a response to a revanchist MAGA movement that shows its own nativist hostility to economic growth and opportunity. Many of the Left's more thoughtful voices are essentially re-embracing the types of pro-growth policies that were once a mainstay among Democrats such as Pat Brown. Ironically, it was Brown's son, Jerry, who during his first term as governor (he actually was a good governor in his more recent iteration), pitched the "era of limits" nonsense that mucked up the works.
Like all burgeoning political movements, this Pat-Brown-style liberalism has a name: the Abundance Movement. We've seen some signs of its emergence. For instance, the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement has scored myriad legislative victories as it promotes the construction of new housing within the urban footprint. The new book, Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson has sparked the idea's widespread acceptance mostly among frustrated liberals.
It's music to my not-so-liberal ears, as the subhead on my 2020 book about water infrastructure uses that term: "California can meet its water needs by promoting abundance rather than managing scarcity." But the concept applies well beyond the water issue.
In his New York Times column, Klein nails the importance of a politics based on abundance—and on the failure of Democratic-run states to live up to any of their grandiose promises: "This is the policy failure haunting blue states. It has become too hard to build and too expensive to live in the places where Democrats govern. It is too hard to build homes. It is too hard to build clean energy. It is too hard to build mass transit. The problem isn't technical: We know how to build apartment complexes and solar panel arrays and train lines. The problem is the rules and the laws and political cultures that govern construction in many blue states."
Per Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom interviewed Klein in his latest podcast. But Newsom plays it too clever by half. "You pick on, understandably, San Francisco. But you can look at almost any city, including a Republican-held city like Huntington Beach, and these same rules and restrictions apply there, and the same frustrations," Newsom said. Well, sure, I've ridiculed Huntington Beach's conservative majority for enacting anti-growth policies—but they fester mainly in liberal cities and states.
One cannot build anything here without navigating a maze of regulatory provisions that delay progress, spark litigation or trigger bureaucratic reviews. As Klein added, "In 2023, California saw a net loss of 268,000 residents; in Illinois, the net loss was 93,000; in New York, 179,000. Why are they leaving? In surveys, the dominant reason is simply this: The cost of living is too high."
Democrats would have a stronger rebuke to Trumpism if our public services were the national model rather than a laughingstock—and if our leaders learned to value the private sector and not simply build bigger government. Abundance sounds like the right ticket—but only if state officials can return to Pat-Brown-style governance rather than use the term as a talking point.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
