Abundance

By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Simon & Schuster, March 2025/304 pages

Reviewed by Colin Robertson

January 4, 2026

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance will resonate with Canadians.

Its core argument that modern liberalism has lost the capacity to build provides timely context to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to restore confidence in that capacity through the government’s “Build Canada Strong” infrastructure and resource policy push.

Abundance reads less like a manifesto for disillusioned American Democrats than a challenge for Western governments facing the same erosion of trust in their ability to deliver. In other words, Abundance reads like Mark Carney has read it.

Former President Barack Obama included the book on his 2025 summer reading list, confirming its entry in the unofficial, current-and-former-wonkish-head-of-government book club.

Vox founder Klein, now a New York Times columnist and author of Why We’re Polarized, and Thompson, a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of On Work, dedicate their book to this proposition: “To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.”

They argue the problem is not a lack of money, concern or ambition, but the accumulation of rules, processes and veto points that turn good intentions into ‘scarcity’ in, for example, government-regulated housing and health care.

The story of the 21st century, they argue, is “the story of chosen scarcities.” For a Canada that prides itself on moderation, consultation, and prudence, that phrase has resonance.

The animating critique of Abundance is that liberal governments have become far better at redistributing wealth than growing income. Over time, they’ve learned to govern by subsidy rather than supply.

“While Democrats focused on giving consumers money to buy what they needed,” Klein and Thompson write, “they paid less attention to the supply of the goods and services they wanted everyone to have.”

The result? Across advanced democracies, generous intentions have collided with financial and regulatory constraints. Housing prices soar despite rent supplements. Energy costs rise even as governments spend billions on climate programs. Infrastructure budgets expand while timelines stretch endlessly.

Canada is no exception. Federal housing transfers multiply, but municipalities continue to restrict density. Climate policy ambition grows, yet transmission lines, grids, pipelines, and clean power projects move at a glacial pace. Governments spend more, but citizens see less.

Abundance reframes this not as a failure of markets but as a failure of liberal governance. “Regulations were assumed to be wise,” the authors write. “Democrats learned to look for opportunities to subsidize. They gave little thought to the difficulties of production.” That diagnosis travels easily across the border.

Housing sits at the core of the book. Klein and Thompson argue that scarcity is not an accident but the predictable outcome of zoning laws, permitting delays, and local vetoes that empower incumbents at the expense of newcomers.

The story of the 21st century, they argue, is ‘the story of chosen scarcities.’ For a Canada that prides itself on moderation, consultation, and prudence, that phrase has resonance.

“When you allow housing to become scarce where the wages are highest,” they write, “you shut down a powerful engine that long kept social mobility high.”

This describes Toronto and Vancouver almost perfectly. Municipal zoning that restricts multi-family housing, minimum parking requirements, and discretionary approvals has turned Canada’s most productive cities into exclusionary spaces. Federal money flows but supply barely moves.

Scarcity has political consequences. It breeds resentment toward immigrants, young people, and cities themselves. Klein and Thompson quote journalist Jerusalem Demsas’s warning that “the tendency to turn against outsiders in the face of critical shortages is not restricted to a basket of deplorables. It’s in all of us.”

For a country built on immigration, housing abundance is not just social policy; it is democratic defence.

The same supply-side logic animates Abundance’s treatment of energy and climate. Klein and Thompson point to environmental review processes that, while created to protect nature, now obstruct the clean-energy transition.

“Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions,” they write, “have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially.”

Canada’s climate challenge looks strikingly similar. Clean-power projects face years of overlapping federal, provincial and municipal reviews. Transmission lines essential for decarbonization are slowed by fragmented authority and procedural drag. Even projects broadly aligned with climate goals struggle to advance.

The argument is not anti-environmentalism but pro-outcomes. Environmentalism, the authors note, “bequeathed both correction and overcorrection.” The task now is institutional renewal: preserving protections while restoring the ability to build at speed and scale.

For Carney — whose climate approach emphasizes investment, risk management, and long-term value — Abundance reinforces a crucial point: pricing carbon and subsidizing demand are insufficient without a state capable of deploying infrastructure. If there is not enough clean energy, Klein and Thompson ask, “… can we make more? If not, why not?”

Beyond housing and energy, the book turns to innovation. Once again, the diagnosis is familiar: systems clogged by administrative burden and risk aversion. Scientists spend more time navigating grant processes than pursuing breakthroughs. Discoveries languish without pathways to scale. “We tolerate a system of research, funding, and regulation,” they write, “that pulls scientists away from their most promising work.”

Canada’s innovation gap — strong research, weak commercialization — fits this pattern. Fixing it requires more than tax credits or venture capital. It demands public procurement, mission-driven investment, and tolerance for failure.

As Klein and Thompson observe, “… the state is no enemy of invention or innovation. In fact, the government can accelerate both.” Deployment, the forgotten half of innovation policy, is where states now fail.

Abundance offers a simple prescription for liberal governance: make government work. It’s a call to action for which Mark Carney’s government could well serve as a test case.

Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a former career diplomat, is a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Ottawa and host of the CGAI’s Global Exchange podcast. He is Policy’s principal global affairs book reviewer.