I kinda sorta addressed this before, but I wanna address it again on its own. Abundence liberalism is a common talking point we're seeing the centrist democrats push as they pivot post loss in 2024, and it's nonsense. It's just neoliberal politic rebranded.
So...what is it exactly? It's the idea that the real problem with the economy is supply shortages making eveything expensive, and if we want to make things affordable for Americans, we need to engage in a form of "supply side" economics to do it. This normally involves deregulating the economy.
Is it valid? Well, in one specific market, yes, otherwise no. Housing is where abundence liberalism actually would work. The reason housing is so expensive is post COVID, as people wanna live alone more, and our population grows, and as everyone crowds into massive cities where we can obviously only fit so many people in it, but more people than we can fit wants to live there, abundance liberalism has a point. Deregulating zoning is good. Denser housing developments is good. More people per square mile is good. That's where this abundance liberalism actually works.
However, other than that, it's a bunch of crap. Here's the thing. Centrist liberals dont wanna address the real hard questions with the economy. THey dont wanna address income and wealth inequality. They dont wanna address the concentration of wealth. And when it comes to fixing market dynamics they think supply side economics is the solution. Ya know, like a republican would. Because these guys are republican lites. Let's face it.
In reality, healthcare is not an issue of shortages. It's an issue of the insurance companies taking people for everything that they've gotten. But they dont wanna challenge the insurance companies or end the high profit gravy train that is healthcare with actual universal healthcare, so they wanna talk about tweaking the ACA and using abundence to say we need more healthcare. Higher supply means lower prices in theory, but not if the problem is people gatekeeping an essential resource for profit. Do we really think that we need insulin to be like hundreds of dollars? it doesnt. Jonas Salk sold the patent for it for $1 because he wanted to help humanity, and it was cheap AF to manufacture. Medical companies charge insane amounts because they can. COVID vaccine. For all the "well these guys need to recoup the costs of development", WE, the TAXPAYERS funded that with operation warp speed. But now it costs $150 to get a dose without insurance because F U some company needs to profit. These guys make money by holding the system hostage and knowing you'll pay insane money.
Education. People wanna push abundance with education. However, once again, the reason the price is high is because they know people will pay it. If anything student loans made it worse by guaranteeing that people would go tens of thousands in debt for an education. Colleges overinvested into their campuses building new buildings they didnt need, and acquiring more buildings for more dorms, and if anything the college I went to and am indebted to is struggling to stay in business because apparently post COVID a lot fewer people WANNA go to college because of the cost and now they're in debt from overexpanding that they cant bring enough people in to make a profit. Like everything else overpriced im discusssing lately, this is a self inflicted blow caused by a business model based on pure greed. It isnt working out for them. Will that mean lower prices for us? No, if anything stuff will go out of business and then the price will remain high. Same with housing to an extent, same with healthcare. A lot of companies would rather keep prices high to condition consumers to pay more than to lower their prices, as economic models would anticipate. We're more likely gonna see people go out of business and then the supply issue correcting in a way to keep the prices high, than we are to see stuff be affordable.
Abundance can only go so far. Even in housing, that is the case. Remember the 2010s and how the banks were keeping entire neighborhoods of houses off the market to keep prices high? Yeah, they did that. That's why we had more homes than homeless people. We could see people in homes, but if we put them up in homes, then that would...*gasp*, lower prices, and lead to lower profit margins. ANd we cant have that, can we?
This is also why companies like say, dunkin donuts would rather throw out tons of donuts at the end of the night than see them donated, or to see employees go home with a few. Nope. Gotta destroy excess supply to keep prices up. As such, any talk of increasing supply to lower prices is just nonsense. That's how capitalism works.
For decades, we've had enough. We've had enough food. We've had enough homes, enough healthcare, enough education, to go around. We made it happen. With the right government policies and investments, we can make it happen. We have K-12 for all. We can have college for all. We can ensure everyone has healthcare through at least a public option, if not single payer healthcare. We can ensure everyone has a home...by making the government build more homes and ensuring people arent as tied to location in terms of where they can afford to lve. We can give people a UBI to ensure they can afford enough food and other basics to live. We can do this, through the policies that I support. Sure, it requires the federal government raising taxes massively, especially on the wealthy, to make it happen. Sure, it requires massive wealth and income redistribution. And the reason the democrats dont wanna do it is because they dont wanna piss the wealthy off. They wanna appeal to and appease them. They literally threw working class voters overboard to win over wealthy suburbanites. And this is why they keep losing to trump. Working class voters are voting republican, because the dems dont do F all to fix their problems, because they're too busy being moderate republicans on the economy.
Again, read poverty amid plenty, the american paradox. We have enough. It's not a problem of not having enough. It's not really a scarcity problem for the most part. it's a distribution problem. Capitalism sucks at distributing resources. The problem reason for this is we insist on everyone working for a living and employers not wanting to pay people. And then private entities in the most expensive industries gatekeep resources for profit. So...to solve the problems with the economy, we need a UBI, we need universal healthcare through at minimum a public option, we need free college through a public option, and we do need to increase the housing supply, yes, that's half of it, but we also need to crack down on profiteering there too. Ya know? We need a whole new New Deal here. We need to go full progressive. These "abundance" type people are just neoliberals who wanna once again ignore the real issues and channel our energy into ineffective solutions that wont do F all to fix the problems. And then they're gonna lose to trump or his successors again, because no one fricking likes them.
So let's cut the crap. These guys are the past, they need to get out of the way. They need to give up. These third wayers need to stop controlling the democratic party and imposing their BS on us. They're worthless political professionals who dont wanna do F all to solve real problems and who only exist as a drain on the system, basically telling us we gotta settle for them to avoid the fascists, or else we get the fascists. Im sick of it. These guys keep losing, they suck, no one likes them, just stop so people with actual solutions can come in and fix things instead.
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