May 2, 2025 • 50 mins
On this episode of The Middle, we chat with Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson to talk about his new book "Abundance," which says that in order to tackle big issues like climate change, housing and infrastructure, politicians need to embrace a politics of abundance rather than a politics of scarcity. DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus calls from around the country. #abundance #infrastructure #climatechange #affordablehousing #democrats #republicans #Trump
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by
building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on
how you can support The Middle at listen to Themiddle
dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson along
(00:21):
with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver. This is a
milestone episode. Wait is it?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It is?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, it is if you count all of our one
Thing Trump Did podcast extras, which are available, as you know,
in partnership with Higheart Podcasts on the iHeart Apple where
you listen to podcasts. This is our one hundredth Middle episode.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh my god, you know what it feels like. I
just started, feels like we just got in.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And it does feel like that. That's a hundred of them.
Think about how many guests we've had to book for that,
how many calls we've gotten, and how many times you
and I have chatted at the beginning and during each episode.
It's been fantastic. Thank you to every everyone who has
been listening. You could say we have an abundance of episodes,
which is kind of funny because that is the title
of the book whose author is with us this hour.
(01:08):
The book Abundance is about what America needs in the
future and why the government and we the people could
do a much better job of achieving those goals. We're
going to get to that in just a moment and
ask you how you think government can work better to
solve the nation's big challenges. As always, your calls are
welcome at eight four to four four middle that's eight
four four four six four three three five three. But first,
(01:32):
last week on the show, we asked you what you
think about the power that billionaires like Elon Musk wielded
in our politics. We had great calls on the show
and even more voicemails that came in afterwards.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Hi, this is Sarah Milstein calling from Milwaukee. Even though
I supported Donald Trump, I'm disgusted by the influence of
these billionaires and I deeply, deeply regret ever supporting that man.
I'm disgusted.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Hello, my name is Nelson.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
I think that money should be removed from the process
of politics entirely, but I think that the purpose of
doge is admirable and needs to be done in government.
Speaker 7 (02:16):
Hey, my name is Ron. I'm in Philadelphia. I don't
know why we're so enamored by billionaires. It'd be better
to have, you know, like a poor grandmother be in
charge of budgets and things. An old grandmother knows how
to negotiate and budget. The ultra rich in charge of
everything is not benefiting the rest of America.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. So now to
our topic this hour, how can government work better to
solve the nation's big challenges? Toll over the phone number again, please.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, it's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four
four four six four three three five three. You can
also write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com.
You can also comment on our live stream on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Joining me this hour the Atlantics. Derek Thompson, one of
the authors of the new book Abundance, along with Ezra
Klined Derek, Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (03:06):
Very good to be here. Thanks Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
So for people who haven't read Abundance, you make the
case that the United States should return to a politics
of abundance rather than a politics of scarcity. Explain the
problem with our politics and our government as you see
it right right now, and by right now, I mean
even before Trump came back into office because your book
takes a longer view.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
Yeah, let me tell you a little bit about how
the book came together, and then talk about how I
think the book meets this moment. So I wrote a
piece several years ago about an idea that I called
the abundance agenda. This is about the fact that during
the pandemic, I felt like America was having to experience
just one scarcity after another. There weren't enough masks, and
(03:49):
there wasn't enough pepe, there weren't enough vaccines, and there
weren't enough free COVID tests.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
And I just felt like.
Speaker 8 (03:56):
The experience of pandemic had been shaped by this idea
of scarcity. And when I zoomed out of the pandemic
itself and thought about America's experience it's economy in the
twenty first century, I thought, there's also not enough homes,
there's not enough clean energy. It seems like this has
been a century of scarcity, and what America needs in
response is an agenda of abundance. So he co wrote
(04:19):
this book with Ezra Klein about this idea called abundance
as it extends across housing and energy and invention and innovation,
and as it turns out in this moment, I feel
like with Trump, this is someone who won the election
based on in many cases questions of unaffordability, people feeling
again like there wasn't enough of what they needed. But
you look at how he's governed, he seems to consistently,
(04:41):
I think, identify scarcities in American society and then try
to fix those scarcities with even more scarcities.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So forget right now. If you look at what's happening
right now, we're having a national discussion about basically how
much of the government to cut dose is sort of
turning off the spigot places or fires people, and a
lot of people realize just how much the government does,
how much they rely on the government. Who do you
think is winning that argument right now, a few months
into Trump's second.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
Term, Well, look, Trump is all the power, right Trump's
the president, and Republicans have Congress, and Republicans have the Senate.
And so the degree to which Democrats are winning this debate,
or at least Trump is losing it can't really be
seen as the levers of power. You can maybe see
it in the polls, right Donald Trump is now much
less popular at this point is presidency than he was
(05:27):
in his first term, but he also started from a
much higher place for approval. So I think it's very
clear that his policies have been quite unpopular with the public.
And you could say, I guess mat to your point,
maybe that's its own indictment that people are, at least
in surveys rejecting his ideas. But ultimately we're not really
going to understand who won the tug of war between
(05:51):
Democrats Republicans until we actually vote on massness country in
twenty six and twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Well, and if we think about the Democrats, one of
the big headlines from your book is that you believe
the left in this country has made things too difficult
from housing to infrastructure, too many rules, too many roadblocks
to progress, and you argue that the Democrats have in
a way been their own worst enemies when it comes
to achieving the goals and the politics of abundance.
Speaker 8 (06:16):
I think it's a really important theme in the book,
this idea that unfortunately, even though I'm a liberal and
my co author is a liberal, I think that if
we're being honest with ourselves in many of the places
where liberals have the most power, they aren't achieving the
outcomes that they consider their priorities, right. I mean housing
(06:37):
has to be considered a liberal priority. But the five
states with the highest rates of homelessness, including California, New York, Oregon,
these are states governed in many cases almost entirely by Democrats,
with innotative of California. There's some evidence that as cities
become more progressive, the number of houses that they permit declines.
(06:59):
So can you add to all of that the housing
experience to clean energy, that that it is Texas, not
California or New York that leaves the country in building
solar and wind. I think liberals do have to reckon
with the fact that we've made it too hard to
build what we find important, and much of the book
is is focused on the barriers to building that exist
(07:20):
in the laws that we pass and the rules that
we allow.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Let's get to the phones and Mary, who's call again?
People can reach us at eight four four four Middle.
That's eight four four four six four three three five three.
Mary is in Parksville, Tennessee. Mary, welcome to the middle.
Go ahead with your thoughts on how the government might
work better to achieve big goals.
Speaker 9 (07:41):
Yeah, I disagree that there's too much regulation. Maybe there's
a little too much regulation on how businesses are run.
But I feel that there needs to be more regulation
requiring employers to provide good retirement programs, good healthcare programs,
(08:01):
because people are just underwater from everyday expenses from medical
to horrible interest rates, and they're just not able to
save and for their future.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Or you'd like to see more regulation, not less.
Speaker 9 (08:23):
I'd like to see more regulations. I mean, if I'm
completely honest, I'd like to see a universal basic income
and universal health care. But that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Do you think more regulation is possible at this point
in this in the world that we live in twenty
twenty five, it seems like the regulations are only being
cut right now.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
No, I don't think it's possible at all. I think
that lobbyists and business have way too much power over
our politicians, over our elected officials, over the policies that
they introduce an inact or the sales.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
So yeah, Mary, thank you very much. Let me take
that to Derek Derek Thompson. Interesting to hear there's a
call for more regulation, not less. But also Mary brings
up the idea of lobbyists and the power that they have.
How did you think about that in thinking about the
themes of your book.
Speaker 8 (09:21):
Well, I think that sometimes this concept of regulation and deregulation,
in a way, these words feel so strongly to us,
and they sometimes disguise what we really mean. Right when
someone says I want more regulation because I want more
protections for workers who can be abused by employers, Well,
of course, I think employees should not be able to be,
(09:42):
you know, financially taken advantage of by their bosses. But
that has very little to do with a lot of
the regulations that we're talking about in this book. Right now,
what I think is it when it comes to zoning
regulations in many American cities, many superstar American cities, it's
zoning regulations, not labor regulations that were looking to cut
(10:02):
So here, I think it's not so much that regulations
are good and deregulations is bad, or that deregulation is
good and regulation is bad. Rather, people should be thinking
about the outcomes that they want from different parts of
the economy and society. Yes, we want a high minimum
wage and a high living wage, but that goal doesn't
(10:25):
have a lot to do with zoning regulations that get
in the way of adding housing in superstar cities.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
You know, you mentioned zoning and you mentioned Texas. I
just think of Houston, which doesn't famously doesn't have zoning.
You can have like a you know, a strip club
right next to a daycare center in Houston. Because of that,
you think that that's the model that we should be
going for.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
Well, it's funny. You know, I don't live in Houston.
I don't think you live in Houston at the moment,
So you know, you and I have not decided to
move to Houston for its many benefits. However, Houston and
Texas is growing much faster than California and New York.
Right the opinion that matters is not really mine or yours.
It's the tens of thousands, even millions of people that
(11:09):
are moving to places like Texas in Florida and the
Great Southwest and moving out of unfortunately a lot of
cities where they want to live, Like there's so many
working class people who want to live in San Francisco
and Los Angeles and Portland but can't of four two.
They're moving to Texas because Texas is building.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And Derek, I'm glad you brought up San Francisco and
Los Angeles because, Tolliver, one of the things that they
talk about in this book is the proposal for a
high street speed train between San Francisco and La Spoiler alert,
it doesn't exist and it's nowhere near existing.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, which pains me. Listen to this clip of former
Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, who approved billions for the
proposal in twenty twelve, followed by current Governor Gavin Newsom,
also Democrat, changing course when he took office in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
This is a time to invest, to create thousands of
jobs like this project. You have to take the bull
by the horns and start spending and investing in things
that make sense. That's why we're in it.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Let's be real.
Speaker 11 (12:04):
The current project as planned would cost too much.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And respectfully take too long.
Speaker 11 (12:11):
There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now,
there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to
San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to La A tale.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Of two Democrats. Boo. And by the way, Tolliver, I
looked it up. It takes eleven hours or so. To
take the slow train that exists right now from San
Francisco to Los Angeles, it would take well between six
and eleven hours to drive, depending on when you leave.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So I'm just gonna walk.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I'm gonna walk in.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That'll take a long time. We'll be right back with
more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national
call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the
middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking you
how can government work better to solve the big challenges
(13:03):
we face? Tolliver, what is the number to call in?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. You can also
write to us that listen to the Middle dot com
or on social media.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I'm joined by Atlantic staff writer and co author of
the new book Abundance, Derek Thompson. And let's go to Kutch,
who's in Harvard, Illinois. Kutsch, go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, I had two core thoughts of we have an
energy consulting business. We help everything from renewables to peaker plants,
even nuclear uprating. And I wanted to Derek is probably
familiar with the policies of like OSHA or EPA, say
thirty day review, but they take a year, eighteen months.
(13:48):
Oftentimes it's you know, it's nearly bankrupting our projects. The
other thing is stakeholders. There was this Justice forty thing
that Biden had and brought in all sorts of so
called stakeholders, but they just wind up being professional blackmailers.
I mean that you know, these you know, this good
(14:09):
thing where you wanted to have community buy in, great,
but that's never what happened. These professional organizations would come
in and claim to be representing distressed communities, and you know,
you know, they wanted obviously some sort of payoff, some
sort of buy in, some sort of ownership, and it
was never the local people. These were national organizations that
(14:32):
would come in claiming to be stakeholders in some local projects.
So I just wanted to get there's opinion on what
it was what we could do to streamline these efforts.
Where my opinion is that with the review process, if
they say, if the policy or loss says it's thirty
(14:52):
or ninety day review. At the end of ninety days,
if there's no decision, we should be able to act.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
As if they got that great coach. Thank you very
much for that. Let's get Derek's thoughts.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
I think because it's exactly right. I mean, I don't
know too much about the second thing you.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Was talking about, but the first thing.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
Is a really profound thesis of this book. I mean,
it is so damn hard to build stuff in this country,
especially compared to the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties. And this
isn't just true for apartment buildings. It's not just true
for skyscrapers. It's not just true for roads. It's not
true for highways or bridges. It's true for everything you
(15:30):
want to build. In the world of energy, as the
caller was saying, it's typical sometimes to build the places
where energy is created, right, a solar power plant or
a solar farm, or you know, certainly nuclear power, but
also at taking that original piece of energy, say that
original piece of electricity has created the solar farm and
(15:51):
transmitting it to its final consumer across transmission lines. The
degree that transmission line construction in this country has slowed
down to the left two decades, just as we need
it to accelerate. It's just really extraordinary, and so so
much of the book is, yes, the kind of nerdy
investigation of exactly how certain rules and regulations that have
gotten in the way of building work. But it's also
(16:13):
kind of like a cry from the heart. But there's
a lot of problems, especially in clean energy, that can
only be solved by building, building, building, and we really
are right now getting in our own way.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You know, you mentioned COVID early on in this conversation,
and I do want to bring that up because as
you talk about the fact that we're not building all
these things, the country did come together and come up
with a vaccine for COVID nineteen very quickly, like in
record time, at warp speed, you might say, mostly because
of government help. And yet today nobody in either party
(16:46):
wants to talk about that. The Republican the Trump administration
who did that don't want to take credit for it
because there are a lot of vaccine skeptics in their base,
and the Democrats don't seem to be talking about it either.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
It really is Jeremy, like the strangest political orphan in
the modern history of American law. I mean, what do
we want laws to do at the end of the day.
We want the law to do what it says in
the ten We want the law to do what people
say it's going to do when they get up and
introduce it.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
And here was a lover.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
We basically said we're going to try to break the
land speed record for developing a vaccine by practically an
order of magnitude, and then we actually did it, and
we've basically taken no lessons from it. There is no
Operation Warp Speed for everything. No one's trying to use
this model for Alzheimer's or diabetes or obesity. It's basically
been lost to the dust minute history. And that's just
(17:38):
so strange. Right Republicans could absolutely say that this is
one of the most important things that Donald Trump ever did.
And Democrats, I think, could say, well, look, we want
government to work. We want it to work on behalf
of people. What's better than a free vaccine that saved
millions of lives. But the lessons of ows have really
been lost. And I would just like to name two
(17:59):
really quickly. Operation Warp Speed did a lot of investing
as subsidy and just giving money to companies that we're
researching these drugs. That also designed a funding mechanism that's
called poll funding, which is kind of like a prize.
We said, we're only going to give you these billions
and billions of dollars if your COVID vaccine therapy passes
(18:22):
a very high threshold. We could do this for all
sorts of medicines and breakthroughs. We could say that we're
going to give companies like ten billion dollars if they
come up for a cheer for patriotic cancer, and here's
all the indications the threshold they have to pass. There's
so many ways I think we could use pole funding.
But for whatever reason, we just haven't taken lessons from
(18:43):
one of the most important laws passed in modern American history.
I just seem it's very, very bizarre, and I wish
we learned from history. Hasn't forgot it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
You can tell that you spent a lot of time
looking at the COVID vaccine program operation warp speed that
you called it ows would I've never heard anybody who
used that phrase before, but Derek, obviously you've been living
in that world for a while. Let's go to Joscelyn
who is in Houston, Texas. Jocelyn, Welcome to the middle.
Go ahead with your thoughts about how to make government
(19:13):
work better.
Speaker 12 (19:15):
Ah, thank you, appreciate your show a lot. So I
think the thing that needs to happen is a lot
more cooperative thinking between the two parties, since that's what
we're stuck with. I've really been an advocate that we
needed more parties because of this block between the two.
(19:36):
But they definitely need to start talking more together and
coming up with solutions. I was saying, I'm a conservative,
my daughter is a liberal. We get in arguments all
the time, and we come up with great solutions that
are in the middle. You know, I'll give a little shield,
give a little and I don't see our government doing it,
and I don't see our mainstream media encouraging it. You know,
(19:59):
there always encouraging, you know, the bad behavior and not
a cooperative behavior. They should demanned cooperative behavior between the
two parties. Every time you're addressing the topic, there should
be a conservative and there should be a liberal, smart,
you know, equally smart on both sides. I hate it
when they kind of pit, you know, someone of a
lesser intelligence against someone with more. But you know that
(20:21):
there are right things that could be done for the
American people in the middle and and that's what needs
to happen. Media needs to encourage it.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I agree with you, Jocelyn that the media needs to
encourage a lot more. I totally agree with you that
that's a big part of what the show is all about.
And by the way, I was talking to somebody the
other day who said, you know, you know how you
could really just explode your podcast download numbers, just get
really partisan because that's what people I'm like, No, but
that's not what we're trying to do. Now, that's now
(20:53):
what we're trying to do. Jocelyn, thank you for that call.
And Derek, your thoughts about would more bipartisanship the party
is not fighting with each other so much, but actually
working together make a big difference in terms of getting
big things done.
Speaker 8 (21:06):
I think the answer is definitely yes. But the real
question is how does that happen? And maybe it's interesting
to look at some places where you do see bipartisanship
right now to take a little bit of a lesson right.
David Leonhardt fenew York Times wrote this really interesting column
maybe one or two years ago may be called a
New Washington consensus. It was about the idea that when
(21:26):
it comes to certain laws like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
to a certain extent that shifts in Science Act, some
laws that had to do with Ukraine, and some laws
that have to do with national security visa EA China,
there's like a surprising amount of by partisanship, especially under Biden.
And what that tells me is that domestic politics is
(21:47):
going to encourage polarization, but where the parties tend to
come together is when they perceive an external threat. Like
there's more bipartisanship on issues related to China than on
issues related to, say, or sports. So I think I
think that's that's just like I don't have a formula
for by partisanship. I think it's far beyond my talents
(22:08):
as an analyst, but I do think that, like, it
is interesting to note that the thing that seems to
be a stimulus for by partisanship is external threats for
better or for ill, And maybe there's a lesson there
in terms of pitching ideas in order to garner by
port bypartisan support.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Let's go to Roger who's in McCall Idaho, Hi Roger,
go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 13 (22:34):
Oh hi, thank you, Yeah, I was calling. I used
to be the planning director in Missoula, Montana, and the
mayor there, the late Great John Enga, used to say
Missoula is the Native American word meaning no. And the
zoning ordinance there, which was based on the Hoover Administration's
(22:55):
Department of Commerce Model Zone zoning Ordinance, which most American
communities are. You know, when something bad happened, the city
council passed a law making it difficult to do again
and again and again, and it became this kind of
Rube Goldberg way of saying no to that just about anything.
And we had the most progressive, comprehensive plan on the
(23:16):
planet and then rules that dated back to Herbert Hoover.
So what we did, what we worked on was, rather
than making it difficult to do the wrong thing, let's
make it ridiculously easy to do the right thing. I
think we need to see more of that here in
this country.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
How do you do that, just quickly, Roger, how do
you make it ridiculously easy to do the right thing?
Just give me an example.
Speaker 13 (23:40):
You don't stop with the vision. You know, there's so
many cities and counties and communities around the country that
put a lot of time into putting a comprehensive plan together,
a plan for the future. The city council passes it
and then they walk off and they don't bother with
dotting the eyes and crossing the t's of putting the
regulations together. That may that vision easy to do.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, Roger, thank you. Derek. You know you have a
line in your book that gets to this. You say,
it doesn't matter what gets spent, it matters what gets built.
Speaker 8 (24:14):
Yeah, that's exactly true. I mean, Montana's done a really
interesting job. I mean Montana Miracle, a famous set of
the housing builds passed in twenty three or twenty twenty four.
That you had some some movement on Adu's accessory dwelling units.
I believe you also had some streamlining to the permitting process.
And it's it's it's the latter that I think is
most important. That the that Roger was talking about. You
(24:37):
have to make it fast. You know, a lot these
these these houses, this energy, it's built by companies and
delay is money. Delay is time, and time is money,
and so anything that accelerates the process is going to
seem to companies like saving them money. So if you
want to make it cheap, you want to make it fast.
And I think that that more city planners and more
(24:58):
mayors and city councils to think really deeply about, Okay,
if what we want is more housing, how do we
make it ridiculously fast for companies to get through the
process of permitting and beginning and any construction.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Tolliver. I know some comments are coming in online.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah, okay, So this is Jeff in Columbia, South Carolina.
He says, the reason underlying all of this lack of
building of affordable housing infrastructure and energy infrastructure is baby boomers.
They have been the pig and the python. The pig
and the python, write that one down their whole lives.
When they were young, we built school, suburbs, universities, and
all the infrastructure needed to support this huge generation.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Derek, what do you think about that blaming the baby boomers?
Speaker 8 (25:43):
Well, look, baby boomers are of a certain age right
now that they are a lot of homeowners, and to
the extent that part of the reason why we don't
have more housing and a lot of tents innis cities
is nimbiism. Homeowners who are against building in their own backyards. Yeah,
maybe it is the case that sort of disproportionately boomer
homeowners across America are a major impediment two housing abundance.
(26:07):
That's possible. But I also feel like, as a political statement,
you don't want to be demonizing like eighty million people.
At the same time, I prefer to see this as
a problem that is sensitive to persuasion rather than demonizing
whole generations. You know, I'm a member of the millennial generation.
(26:28):
I'm very.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
All sorts of things.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, I remember how we are. The avocado toast
that we were buying in twenty fourteen are ruining the economy.
I mean, so this is this is maybe why I'm
like a little bit once burnt twice shy when it
comes to t geners, generation generalizations, I guess is what
I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Now, I just make my own avocado toast. It's very easy.
You just take a little bit of avocado, some olive oil, lemon, salt,
and pepper on the toast. Done, and it's a lot
cheaper than buying it out at the restaurant. Let's go
to Let's go to Annie, who's in Barrington, Rhode Island. Hi, Annie,
welcome to the middle. What do you think.
Speaker 14 (27:09):
Annie, I think that we're being presented with false Hello.
Can you hear me?
Speaker 13 (27:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, go ahead Annie, can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yep?
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Hello?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 14 (27:19):
I think we're being presented by false choices, both by
both the writer and also the guests, because it's not
too many regulations or no regulations. Because we need regulations
to some extent. You have to tell people what the
regulations are for, and then do they want them, so, yes,
(27:39):
let's tear everything up. And but then you say, oh,
but that means you have really dirty water and your
kids can't breathe and they have asthma. So I think
it's not fair to say fewer regulations. The other issue
is I have no problem with blaming the baby boomers.
And people are really selfish and they want to keep
what they have, and so one incentive could be give
(28:04):
them the ability of incentives to take the three acre
property they have in in western Massachusetts and say we
will give you incentives to actually build small cottages or
something like that, or something else, or elderly people who
have far more real estate than they can afford you
(28:25):
know they're real estate rich, but they can't pay the taxes. Well,
it's sick. Can we use your property to do that?
But the problem with getting rid of regulations is that
they're there for a reason.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Yes, I do agree that well, and I get away
with them.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I would bet that Derek actually would agree with
you on the on the need for regulation. But Derek,
how do you answer Annie that you don't want to
throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of regulations.
Speaker 8 (28:51):
Yeah, I mean this is this is a common question
about about the book and about our politics, which is
are you just against all regulations? The answer is obviously no,
not against all regulations, but media a harder question to
answer is how do you decide which environmental regulations your
for and which environmental regulations you think are getting in
(29:12):
the way of, ironically the cause of environmentalism. So here's
the way I think about it. There's aspects of the
Clean Air and Water Act that are outcome based regulations.
They say, from a parts per million perspective, the air
has to be this clean and the water has to
be this clean, and the tailpipes can't have as level
of emissions. But there's other environmental regulations that essentially exist
(29:34):
to make it easy for neighbors to use environmental assessment
and environmental review to stop the construction of anything that
changes the physical world around them, and that ironically has
the result of blocking solar farms and wind turbines and
transmission lines, all of which would help us build a
(29:55):
clean energy economy. So that's the distinction between I think
and out become based regulation, which I tend to support,
in a process based regulation which can ultimately become the
tool of the moneyed elite to simply have their way.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, Tolliver, there have been a lot of calls from
both parties to do what we've been talking about, build
more housing for Americans, and especially affordable housing.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah, and sometimes people say they want housing. But what
are the words not in my backyard? Nimby?
Speaker 13 (30:28):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
That may have been a new phrase back in this
nineteen eighty eight news report.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
It's called nimby not in my backyard.
Speaker 15 (30:36):
City planners say the attitude is spreading and causing widespread
social disruption. A lot of the nimby is a manifest
itself in the stuff that's clearly unacceptable, solid waste dumps
or prisons. But there are things that really are very benign,
and yet everywhere you go people say, yeah, we need
a library, you know, we need a daycare center, or
(30:59):
we need an airport, but we never want it in
our own neighborhood.
Speaker 16 (31:03):
Yards.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Who's got yards. I'm in a city, man, We got
we got parking.
Speaker 13 (31:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So then you don't have to worry about this problem.
It's not it's not for you, Tolliver, not back lore
of the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson,
and this hour we're asking you how can government work
better to solve the big issues we face. You can
call us at eight four four four Middle. That's eight
four four four six four three three five three. You
(31:28):
can also reach out to us at listen Toothmiddle dot com.
My guest is Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson, whose new
book is called Abundance. Derek, I want to ask you
one more thing about affordable housing, which you obviously touch
on a lot of other topics in here that I
want to get to. But one other thing is what
do you think is the connection between the availability of
affordable housing and homelessness, which so many cities are seeing
(31:51):
because many people would look at the homeless issue and say, Oh,
it's about the government benefits that some homeless get in
some city, that's why there are more homeless in some
place or others. Or it's a mental health issue. But
what about the connection just between the affordability of a
city and the amount of homeless people who end up there.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yeah, this is a good, deep question, and I am
persuaded by the idea that homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem.
This is why, in a nutshell, mental health issues are national.
There are people with schizophrenia in every state. There are
thousands of people with schizophrenia in practically every state. There
(32:37):
are all sorts of issues of economic insecurity that are
national as well. But homelessness tends to be very spiky.
It's much much higher in some cities than others, and
in those cities you do tend to see evidence of
housing scarcity, not just high homelessness, but also low vacancy rates.
(32:59):
Vacancy rates are sort of industry term for the amount
of housing stock that's not currently occupied by an owner
or a renter. And what this tells me is that
like life is hard, and there's a lot of people
who maybe live at the margin of being homed. They're
in one place and out of another. And in that
game of musical chairs, when there's more chairs that are open,
(33:19):
it's easier to lose your housing in one place and
find it than another. But in cities where there aren't
enough chairs for the game of musical chairs, it's going
to happen. There's going to be people who are left out,
and those are the people that we see on the streets.
So I like to see. I am persuaded by the
case that homelessness is profoundly a housing issue.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
There are a lot of people who agree. I have
done a lot of reporting on homelessness in my career,
and there are many people who agree with you about that.
Let's go to Chris, who's in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hi, Chris,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
Hi. Hello, I'll give the up FRONTO. I'm a boomer.
I don't think my generation cause of all evil. I
would say the problemsy is that our dysfunctional government has
to do with the absolute inability to compromise. You have
(34:17):
two parties for the most part, and they are absolutely
unwilling to give ground. You know, it's give it to
me my way, or I'm taking my ball back and
going home. You know, in the city I live in,
it's you know, dominated by liberals, and they you know,
(34:39):
if you don't do it their way, you don't get things.
I've a property and they because the city won't let them.
So it's I think you have to be able to compromise,
and the way we are right now, people will refuse
(35:01):
to do it. They just will meet in the middle.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, thank you very much for that, Chris. And at
the national level, of course, we see that right now, Derek,
of people not just unwilling to compromise, but retribution against
people taking people out just because the previous administration put
them in. We see just a lot of funding being
cut just because it had to do with Biden's priorities
(35:26):
as opposed to Trump's priorities. Now, what do you think about.
Speaker 8 (35:28):
That, Well, I think it's awful, and I think it's
incredibly stupid and incredibly counter productive. I mean, what Trump
and Trump's advisors tend to say over and over again
about these terraffs is that it's all about restoring manufacturing
in areas that are critical to our national interest. Well,
if you wanted to reassure in areas critical to a
(35:50):
national interest, you know surely you'd be interusted in, say
building nuclear power or building advanced computer chips. But the
Trump administration, because it hates the concept of progressivism and
Biden so much, is also dismantling the Department of Energy
Loan Programs Office, which is the number one institution for
funding nuclear power. They're dismantling the Chips and Science Act,
(36:14):
which is responsible for building the fabs, the factories that
make the most advanced computer chips. And so you have
this level of negative polarization and shrub administration, this level
of hatred really that is so blinded policymakers on the
right right now that they cannot see that their attempts
(36:36):
to dismantle Biden's legacy are actually getting in their own
way and keeping them from, say, building nuclear power and
advanced computer chips. It's madness, but it's the kind of
madness that only comes from deciding that you hate something
more than you want to achieve anything.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Let's go to Brooks, who's in Greenville, South Carolina. High Brooks,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 17 (37:03):
Hey, I feel like like a part of this discussion
whenever you're talking about efficiency or like how something can
work better, that gets missed is kind of the idea
that efficiency sometimes can be an illusion and that you know,
efficient what seems efficient is really efficient at passing the
(37:24):
buck or you know, outsourcing something. And so, you know,
to me, when I think about our government and maybe
what's failed as I think about competitive federalism particularly, you
have all these different layers of governments, and it seems
like we've taken the approach that it's easier to dangle
money than it is to dangle regulation. And I feel
(37:48):
like due to the lack of synergy between local governments
and state governments and federal governments, we get a lot
of inefficient spending because you know, funding goes to groups
that put together the best grant applications and may not
consider more holistic needs for funding and those sorts of things.
(38:10):
So I just kind of wanted to bring that up,
and you know, if some of that might have been
covered in the book or anything like that, Yeah, Eric.
Speaker 7 (38:21):
You know.
Speaker 8 (38:23):
A little bit like at a high level, at a
high level, a lot of this is in the book.
You know, I think I think it's important to say, like,
the book doesn't try to talk about absolutely everything. You know,
one of the bigger criticisms of the book actually sort
of you know, gone around the country and talked about it,
is that, you know, people tend to have their own
big thing that they want to see in a book
(38:44):
about the future of liberalism. And some people want to
see more antitrust or some people want to see more
anti oligarchy, some people want more focus on on housing,
some people want much less focused on housing. And this book,
i think is overall is a fairly seffaritely narrow message.
The narrow message is that they're a handful of really
(39:07):
wonderful progressive priorities housing, clean energy, the importance of science
and therefore the importance of scientific invention. And we're interested
in understanding how these systems work and in understanding how
sometimes we get in our own way, that is to say,
how liberals and the liberal preference for process sometimes gets
(39:29):
in our own way. And one big part of that,
one big sort of takeaway from our analysis of how
long many sort of progressive processes take is its speed
really is a progressive priority in so many cases in
housing and clean energy, in building, just about anything in
the physical world that the column is talking about. It's
(39:49):
just really damn hard to do things. And if we
want to do is build in this country houses, manufacturing,
we have to do it faster.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Let's go to Eric, who's in Chicago. Hi, Eric, Welcome
to the middle. What do you think government could how
could it work better and achieve the goals that it
wants to.
Speaker 16 (40:10):
Well, you know, I'm I'm an architect and a neighborhood
president in the city of Chicago, and you know, so
the conversation about zoning and regulations and and is particularly
interesting to me. You know, I think there's some issues
with you know, as far as kind of the conversation
about the de regulating or or eliminating some of our
(40:35):
protections of zoning. As a neighborhood leader, you know, zoning
is is you know, the sometimes the only tool that uh,
you know, my neighbors, my community has to protect itself
from inappropriate development or in the case you know, a
few about a decade ago, I lived in Kansas City. Similarly,
(40:57):
I was a neighborhood leader there. You lived in a
neighborhood that was constantly under threat of large developments, you know,
gobbling up small single family homes and and and really
changing the character of the neighborhood, but also making it
it it inaccessible for the people that live there. And
(41:17):
so you know, zoning is I think uh has has
been used or can be used as a protection for that.
The other thing I noticed a lot of work in
different municipalities around the country is that, you know, a
lot of our communities has privatized their plan review and
the thought is that that might you know, speed up
(41:38):
the process or make the process more efficient in other ways,
and and that has really not been the case in
my observation. One thing I do see is that you know,
when you have a conversation about making government smaller and
about deregulation, that never really like what we're seeing in Washington, DC,
is talking about you know, eliminating jobs, getting rid of
the people that would be helping to speed up these processes.
(42:02):
So in these communities that privatize plan review or zoning review,
that that you know that that's a cause for you know,
eliminating some of those positions that are very important to
keeping the process moving efficiently.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, well, Eric, that's a great point, and let me
take that to Derek. Derek as we watch DOGE go
into department after department and cut things, do you see
any way that that's going to make things more efficient,
make government work better, to be eliminating so many positions
and probably a lot of regulation in the process.
Speaker 8 (42:37):
No, absolutely not, No does doesn't know what it's doing.
Dogs is profoundly in that as an organization. It's really
stunning to me how little they understand it of what
they're cutting. You can see this just made plane in
in their outcomes. At every single organization, every single department
(42:58):
that they've fired people or dismissed people, they've had to
eventually call them back because they realized they were firing
or dismissing absolutely essential workers. Right, So they're shooting first
and then you know asking questions second, you look what's
happening at the FDA. They want to increase the efficiency
of the FDA. What does efficiency at the FDA mean?
(43:20):
You know, ultimately, what you want is for the FDA
to approve the drugs that make us healthy and to
exclude and not approve the drugs that aren't safe or
aren't effective. What you need to do that are people.
But instead, because DOGE only understands the logic of cutting.
They dismissed hundreds and hundreds at FDA workers that now
(43:44):
many folks in the biotech industry are saying the result
of that will slow down drug approval. They've made the
process less efficient by cutting it, not more efficient by
cutting it. So so many of these problems, whether it's
housing or clean energy, or to accelerate drug approvals at
the federal level, This is not about having an ideology
(44:05):
that's the key that opens every single lock. Jess, Actually
understand what it is you're doing and what is this
you're trying to do. I don't think those does Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I'm looking at the phone lines and they've been all
full from all over the country. But I know you're
looking at the comments coming in online and they're coming
in fast too.
Speaker 13 (44:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Well, I'm gonna start with this petty one, real quick.
Robin and Houston says. On tonight's show, Jeremy mentioned the
lack of zoning in Houston. I live in Houston, and
while this true, Houston doesn't have much commercial and residential zoning.
You cannot build a strip club next to a nursery
the middle. You cannot bud a strip club next to
a nursery Kara and No Minnesota says we boomers would
love to give up our homes if appropriate elder community
(44:46):
housing were available, and Trician Chicago says people are moving
to places with little regulation because jobs move there because
there's little regulation, including low pay, no union's, little environmental
you guessed it, regulations.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
All right, and let's get to other Call in Stacy,
who's in Morrisville, Vermont. Hi, Stacy, go ahead with your.
Speaker 7 (45:04):
Thoughts, Hi.
Speaker 18 (45:07):
I just think the priorities are on that we spend
too much money on bonds to kill people instead of
building what we need here.
Speaker 13 (45:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
I mean that's a good point, and that you think
that that's keeping us from being from achieving our goals.
The wars that have been going on over the years
around the world.
Speaker 18 (45:28):
Oh yeah, I mean think of all the money and
think about the horrible things happening to people that you know,
it's just money could be better spent. And I just
want to say, I'm an old grandma hippie and I
think we need to really start respecting Mother Earth more.
And I know technology is real popular, but I think
(45:52):
everybody needs to go out and hug a tree. That's it.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, Stacy, thank you, And and you know, Derek, that
brings us to a very interesting point that you bring
up in this book, and we haven't really talked about
that much, which is that inventing our way out of
some of the problems that we face, including the climate crisis,
is something that the government should be doing, and maybe
it's going to be something that we don't even know
exists yet that gets us out of these issues that
(46:18):
we're dealing with. Do you think that that could happen
in the United States, that maybe there's a new power source,
fusion power or something like that comes along and saves
the day and we don't have to worry about any
of this anymore.
Speaker 8 (46:30):
Yeah, I think it's possible. I think it's been very,
very hard. I think energy is hard, chemistry is hard,
physics is hard. This is a lot of hard science.
But I do think it's possible, and I think it's
worth remembering how we got here. In a world where
we had never invented the fotovl TXL, where we had
never invented solar energy, it wouldn't be possible to lean
(46:50):
on solar energy the way this country and so many
countries around the world are, but technology creates new possibilities,
creating solar energy right Inventing the efficient photovolta Excel, which
I believe happened at Bell Labs, took a really dedicated
group of scientists working in the institution they felt safe
(47:12):
in that they didn't think was going to implode. This
is Dell Labs, the R and D factory of AT
and T in the mold of the twentieth century. You
know what that tells me is that really good science
can be done when scientists are left alone to be scientists.
And right now we are certainly not doing that. And
the trumpdministration is going after Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern Cornell. They're
(47:35):
cutting between thirty and fifty percent from the NIH and
NSF budgets. People at the NIH and at universities across
the country don't know if you know, a new keyword
search is going to turn up some word in their
paper that's going to be looked on just favorably by
the administration. This is not the way to make scientists
(47:55):
feel like they can take big risks.
Speaker 9 (47:57):
This is.
Speaker 8 (47:59):
I think a very dangerous way to try to invent
the future.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I've just got about a minute left here, Derek, But
let me ask you one more question. You write in
the book that liberals need to recognize when the government
is failing, conservatives need to recognize when it is needed.
What do you think the political middle should be doing.
Speaker 8 (48:18):
I think the middle should be curious. I think the
middle should be curious. I think the middle should you know,
one of the one of the virtues of not naming
yourself after a party, right, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican,
is that you're always deciding, right, You're you're you're hopefully
always thinking, and that requires intense curiosity about what's happening
(48:41):
in the world and which parties are following up their
goals with action. I think that I think the curiosity
should be the Watchford of the of the middle.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I guess that is Derek Thompson, a staff writer for
The Atlantic, co author of the new book Abundance. Derek,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, and
don't forget. The Middle is available as a podcast in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeart app or wherever
you listen to podcasts and come into your feed. In
the next few days, an episode of our weekly podcast
extra one thing Trump did, where we will talk about
(49:13):
US Canada relations following the national election in Canada, which
was all about Trump. Next week we'll be right back
here asking you what improvements still need to be made
in society for people with disabilities.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
As always, you can call in at eight four four
four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three
three five three. You can also reach out and listen
to the Middle dot com. You can also sign up
for our free weekly newsletter and by Middle Merge, which
just is going to list Houston zoning regulations.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Oh boy. From here on now, The Middle is brought
to you by LONGNOK Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media
in Urbana, Illinois, and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander,
Sam Burmas, DAWs, John Barth, An Akadestler, and Brandon Kondritz.
Our technical director is Jason Kropt. Thanks to our satellite
radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the more than four
hundred and thirty public radio stations making it possible for
people across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm
(50:03):
Jeremy Hobson, and I'll talk to you next week.
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by
building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on
how you can support The Middle at listen to Themiddle
dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson along
(00:21):
with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver. This is a
milestone episode. Wait is it?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It is?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, it is if you count all of our one
Thing Trump Did podcast extras, which are available, as you know,
in partnership with Higheart Podcasts on the iHeart Apple where
you listen to podcasts. This is our one hundredth Middle episode.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh my god, you know what it feels like. I
just started, feels like we just got in.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And it does feel like that. That's a hundred of them.
Think about how many guests we've had to book for that,
how many calls we've gotten, and how many times you
and I have chatted at the beginning and during each episode.
It's been fantastic. Thank you to every everyone who has
been listening. You could say we have an abundance of episodes,
which is kind of funny because that is the title
of the book whose author is with us this hour.
(01:08):
The book Abundance is about what America needs in the
future and why the government and we the people could
do a much better job of achieving those goals. We're
going to get to that in just a moment and
ask you how you think government can work better to
solve the nation's big challenges. As always, your calls are
welcome at eight four to four four middle that's eight
four four four six four three three five three. But first,
(01:32):
last week on the show, we asked you what you
think about the power that billionaires like Elon Musk wielded
in our politics. We had great calls on the show
and even more voicemails that came in afterwards.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Hi, this is Sarah Milstein calling from Milwaukee. Even though
I supported Donald Trump, I'm disgusted by the influence of
these billionaires and I deeply, deeply regret ever supporting that man.
I'm disgusted.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Hello, my name is Nelson.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
I think that money should be removed from the process
of politics entirely, but I think that the purpose of
doge is admirable and needs to be done in government.
Speaker 7 (02:16):
Hey, my name is Ron. I'm in Philadelphia. I don't
know why we're so enamored by billionaires. It'd be better
to have, you know, like a poor grandmother be in
charge of budgets and things. An old grandmother knows how
to negotiate and budget. The ultra rich in charge of
everything is not benefiting the rest of America.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. So now to
our topic this hour, how can government work better to
solve the nation's big challenges? Toll over the phone number again, please.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah, it's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four
four four six four three three five three. You can
also write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com.
You can also comment on our live stream on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Joining me this hour the Atlantics. Derek Thompson, one of
the authors of the new book Abundance, along with Ezra
Klined Derek, Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (03:06):
Very good to be here. Thanks Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
So for people who haven't read Abundance, you make the
case that the United States should return to a politics
of abundance rather than a politics of scarcity. Explain the
problem with our politics and our government as you see
it right right now, and by right now, I mean
even before Trump came back into office because your book
takes a longer view.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
Yeah, let me tell you a little bit about how
the book came together, and then talk about how I
think the book meets this moment. So I wrote a
piece several years ago about an idea that I called
the abundance agenda. This is about the fact that during
the pandemic, I felt like America was having to experience
just one scarcity after another. There weren't enough masks, and
(03:49):
there wasn't enough pepe, there weren't enough vaccines, and there
weren't enough free COVID tests.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
And I just felt like.
Speaker 8 (03:56):
The experience of pandemic had been shaped by this idea
of scarcity. And when I zoomed out of the pandemic
itself and thought about America's experience it's economy in the
twenty first century, I thought, there's also not enough homes,
there's not enough clean energy. It seems like this has
been a century of scarcity, and what America needs in
response is an agenda of abundance. So he co wrote
(04:19):
this book with Ezra Klein about this idea called abundance
as it extends across housing and energy and invention and innovation,
and as it turns out in this moment, I feel
like with Trump, this is someone who won the election
based on in many cases questions of unaffordability, people feeling
again like there wasn't enough of what they needed. But
you look at how he's governed, he seems to consistently,
(04:41):
I think, identify scarcities in American society and then try
to fix those scarcities with even more scarcities.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So forget right now. If you look at what's happening
right now, we're having a national discussion about basically how
much of the government to cut dose is sort of
turning off the spigot places or fires people, and a
lot of people realize just how much the government does,
how much they rely on the government. Who do you
think is winning that argument right now, a few months
into Trump's second.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
Term, Well, look, Trump is all the power, right Trump's
the president, and Republicans have Congress, and Republicans have the Senate.
And so the degree to which Democrats are winning this debate,
or at least Trump is losing it can't really be
seen as the levers of power. You can maybe see
it in the polls, right Donald Trump is now much
less popular at this point is presidency than he was
(05:27):
in his first term, but he also started from a
much higher place for approval. So I think it's very
clear that his policies have been quite unpopular with the public.
And you could say, I guess mat to your point,
maybe that's its own indictment that people are, at least
in surveys rejecting his ideas. But ultimately we're not really
going to understand who won the tug of war between
(05:51):
Democrats Republicans until we actually vote on massness country in
twenty six and twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Well, and if we think about the Democrats, one of
the big headlines from your book is that you believe
the left in this country has made things too difficult
from housing to infrastructure, too many rules, too many roadblocks
to progress, and you argue that the Democrats have in
a way been their own worst enemies when it comes
to achieving the goals and the politics of abundance.
Speaker 8 (06:16):
I think it's a really important theme in the book,
this idea that unfortunately, even though I'm a liberal and
my co author is a liberal, I think that if
we're being honest with ourselves in many of the places
where liberals have the most power, they aren't achieving the
outcomes that they consider their priorities, right. I mean housing
(06:37):
has to be considered a liberal priority. But the five
states with the highest rates of homelessness, including California, New York, Oregon,
these are states governed in many cases almost entirely by Democrats,
with innotative of California. There's some evidence that as cities
become more progressive, the number of houses that they permit declines.
(06:59):
So can you add to all of that the housing
experience to clean energy, that that it is Texas, not
California or New York that leaves the country in building
solar and wind. I think liberals do have to reckon
with the fact that we've made it too hard to
build what we find important, and much of the book
is is focused on the barriers to building that exist
(07:20):
in the laws that we pass and the rules that
we allow.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Let's get to the phones and Mary, who's call again?
People can reach us at eight four four four Middle.
That's eight four four four six four three three five three.
Mary is in Parksville, Tennessee. Mary, welcome to the middle.
Go ahead with your thoughts on how the government might
work better to achieve big goals.
Speaker 9 (07:41):
Yeah, I disagree that there's too much regulation. Maybe there's
a little too much regulation on how businesses are run.
But I feel that there needs to be more regulation
requiring employers to provide good retirement programs, good healthcare programs,
(08:01):
because people are just underwater from everyday expenses from medical
to horrible interest rates, and they're just not able to
save and for their future.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Or you'd like to see more regulation, not less.
Speaker 9 (08:23):
I'd like to see more regulations. I mean, if I'm
completely honest, I'd like to see a universal basic income
and universal health care. But that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Do you think more regulation is possible at this point
in this in the world that we live in twenty
twenty five, it seems like the regulations are only being
cut right now.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
No, I don't think it's possible at all. I think
that lobbyists and business have way too much power over
our politicians, over our elected officials, over the policies that
they introduce an inact or the sales.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
So yeah, Mary, thank you very much. Let me take
that to Derek Derek Thompson. Interesting to hear there's a
call for more regulation, not less. But also Mary brings
up the idea of lobbyists and the power that they have.
How did you think about that in thinking about the
themes of your book.
Speaker 8 (09:21):
Well, I think that sometimes this concept of regulation and deregulation,
in a way, these words feel so strongly to us,
and they sometimes disguise what we really mean. Right when
someone says I want more regulation because I want more
protections for workers who can be abused by employers, Well,
of course, I think employees should not be able to be,
(09:42):
you know, financially taken advantage of by their bosses. But
that has very little to do with a lot of
the regulations that we're talking about in this book. Right now,
what I think is it when it comes to zoning
regulations in many American cities, many superstar American cities, it's
zoning regulations, not labor regulations that were looking to cut
(10:02):
So here, I think it's not so much that regulations
are good and deregulations is bad, or that deregulation is
good and regulation is bad. Rather, people should be thinking
about the outcomes that they want from different parts of
the economy and society. Yes, we want a high minimum
wage and a high living wage, but that goal doesn't
(10:25):
have a lot to do with zoning regulations that get
in the way of adding housing in superstar cities.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
You know, you mentioned zoning and you mentioned Texas. I
just think of Houston, which doesn't famously doesn't have zoning.
You can have like a you know, a strip club
right next to a daycare center in Houston. Because of that,
you think that that's the model that we should be
going for.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
Well, it's funny. You know, I don't live in Houston.
I don't think you live in Houston at the moment,
So you know, you and I have not decided to
move to Houston for its many benefits. However, Houston and
Texas is growing much faster than California and New York.
Right the opinion that matters is not really mine or yours.
It's the tens of thousands, even millions of people that
(11:09):
are moving to places like Texas in Florida and the
Great Southwest and moving out of unfortunately a lot of
cities where they want to live, Like there's so many
working class people who want to live in San Francisco
and Los Angeles and Portland but can't of four two.
They're moving to Texas because Texas is building.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And Derek, I'm glad you brought up San Francisco and
Los Angeles because, Tolliver, one of the things that they
talk about in this book is the proposal for a
high street speed train between San Francisco and La Spoiler alert,
it doesn't exist and it's nowhere near existing.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, which pains me. Listen to this clip of former
Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, who approved billions for the
proposal in twenty twelve, followed by current Governor Gavin Newsom,
also Democrat, changing course when he took office in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
This is a time to invest, to create thousands of
jobs like this project. You have to take the bull
by the horns and start spending and investing in things
that make sense. That's why we're in it.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Let's be real.
Speaker 11 (12:04):
The current project as planned would cost too much.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And respectfully take too long.
Speaker 11 (12:11):
There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now,
there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to
San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to La A tale.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Of two Democrats. Boo. And by the way, Tolliver, I
looked it up. It takes eleven hours or so. To
take the slow train that exists right now from San
Francisco to Los Angeles, it would take well between six
and eleven hours to drive, depending on when you leave.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So I'm just gonna walk.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I'm gonna walk in.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That'll take a long time. We'll be right back with
more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national
call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the
middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking you
how can government work better to solve the big challenges
(13:03):
we face? Tolliver, what is the number to call in?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. You can also
write to us that listen to the Middle dot com
or on social media.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I'm joined by Atlantic staff writer and co author of
the new book Abundance, Derek Thompson. And let's go to Kutch,
who's in Harvard, Illinois. Kutsch, go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, I had two core thoughts of we have an
energy consulting business. We help everything from renewables to peaker plants,
even nuclear uprating. And I wanted to Derek is probably
familiar with the policies of like OSHA or EPA, say
thirty day review, but they take a year, eighteen months.
(13:48):
Oftentimes it's you know, it's nearly bankrupting our projects. The
other thing is stakeholders. There was this Justice forty thing
that Biden had and brought in all sorts of so
called stakeholders, but they just wind up being professional blackmailers.
I mean that you know, these you know, this good
(14:09):
thing where you wanted to have community buy in, great,
but that's never what happened. These professional organizations would come
in and claim to be representing distressed communities, and you know,
you know, they wanted obviously some sort of payoff, some
sort of buy in, some sort of ownership, and it
was never the local people. These were national organizations that
(14:32):
would come in claiming to be stakeholders in some local projects.
So I just wanted to get there's opinion on what
it was what we could do to streamline these efforts.
Where my opinion is that with the review process, if
they say, if the policy or loss says it's thirty
(14:52):
or ninety day review. At the end of ninety days,
if there's no decision, we should be able to act.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
As if they got that great coach. Thank you very
much for that. Let's get Derek's thoughts.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
I think because it's exactly right. I mean, I don't
know too much about the second thing you.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Was talking about, but the first thing.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
Is a really profound thesis of this book. I mean,
it is so damn hard to build stuff in this country,
especially compared to the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties. And this
isn't just true for apartment buildings. It's not just true
for skyscrapers. It's not just true for roads. It's not
true for highways or bridges. It's true for everything you
(15:30):
want to build. In the world of energy, as the
caller was saying, it's typical sometimes to build the places
where energy is created, right, a solar power plant or
a solar farm, or you know, certainly nuclear power, but
also at taking that original piece of energy, say that
original piece of electricity has created the solar farm and
(15:51):
transmitting it to its final consumer across transmission lines. The
degree that transmission line construction in this country has slowed
down to the left two decades, just as we need
it to accelerate. It's just really extraordinary, and so so
much of the book is, yes, the kind of nerdy
investigation of exactly how certain rules and regulations that have
gotten in the way of building work. But it's also
(16:13):
kind of like a cry from the heart. But there's
a lot of problems, especially in clean energy, that can
only be solved by building, building, building, and we really
are right now getting in our own way.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You know, you mentioned COVID early on in this conversation,
and I do want to bring that up because as
you talk about the fact that we're not building all
these things, the country did come together and come up
with a vaccine for COVID nineteen very quickly, like in
record time, at warp speed, you might say, mostly because
of government help. And yet today nobody in either party
(16:46):
wants to talk about that. The Republican the Trump administration
who did that don't want to take credit for it
because there are a lot of vaccine skeptics in their base,
and the Democrats don't seem to be talking about it either.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
It really is Jeremy, like the strangest political orphan in
the modern history of American law. I mean, what do
we want laws to do at the end of the day.
We want the law to do what it says in
the ten We want the law to do what people
say it's going to do when they get up and
introduce it.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
And here was a lover.
Speaker 8 (17:16):
We basically said we're going to try to break the
land speed record for developing a vaccine by practically an
order of magnitude, and then we actually did it, and
we've basically taken no lessons from it. There is no
Operation Warp Speed for everything. No one's trying to use
this model for Alzheimer's or diabetes or obesity. It's basically
been lost to the dust minute history. And that's just
(17:38):
so strange. Right Republicans could absolutely say that this is
one of the most important things that Donald Trump ever did.
And Democrats, I think, could say, well, look, we want
government to work. We want it to work on behalf
of people. What's better than a free vaccine that saved
millions of lives. But the lessons of ows have really
been lost. And I would just like to name two
(17:59):
really quickly. Operation Warp Speed did a lot of investing
as subsidy and just giving money to companies that we're
researching these drugs. That also designed a funding mechanism that's
called poll funding, which is kind of like a prize.
We said, we're only going to give you these billions
and billions of dollars if your COVID vaccine therapy passes
(18:22):
a very high threshold. We could do this for all
sorts of medicines and breakthroughs. We could say that we're
going to give companies like ten billion dollars if they
come up for a cheer for patriotic cancer, and here's
all the indications the threshold they have to pass. There's
so many ways I think we could use pole funding.
But for whatever reason, we just haven't taken lessons from
(18:43):
one of the most important laws passed in modern American history.
I just seem it's very, very bizarre, and I wish
we learned from history. Hasn't forgot it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
You can tell that you spent a lot of time
looking at the COVID vaccine program operation warp speed that
you called it ows would I've never heard anybody who
used that phrase before, but Derek, obviously you've been living
in that world for a while. Let's go to Joscelyn
who is in Houston, Texas. Jocelyn, Welcome to the middle.
Go ahead with your thoughts about how to make government
(19:13):
work better.
Speaker 12 (19:15):
Ah, thank you, appreciate your show a lot. So I
think the thing that needs to happen is a lot
more cooperative thinking between the two parties, since that's what
we're stuck with. I've really been an advocate that we
needed more parties because of this block between the two.
(19:36):
But they definitely need to start talking more together and
coming up with solutions. I was saying, I'm a conservative,
my daughter is a liberal. We get in arguments all
the time, and we come up with great solutions that
are in the middle. You know, I'll give a little shield,
give a little and I don't see our government doing it,
and I don't see our mainstream media encouraging it. You know,
(19:59):
there always encouraging, you know, the bad behavior and not
a cooperative behavior. They should demanned cooperative behavior between the
two parties. Every time you're addressing the topic, there should
be a conservative and there should be a liberal, smart,
you know, equally smart on both sides. I hate it
when they kind of pit, you know, someone of a
lesser intelligence against someone with more. But you know that
(20:21):
there are right things that could be done for the
American people in the middle and and that's what needs
to happen. Media needs to encourage it.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I agree with you, Jocelyn that the media needs to
encourage a lot more. I totally agree with you that
that's a big part of what the show is all about.
And by the way, I was talking to somebody the
other day who said, you know, you know how you
could really just explode your podcast download numbers, just get
really partisan because that's what people I'm like, No, but
that's not what we're trying to do. Now, that's now
(20:53):
what we're trying to do. Jocelyn, thank you for that call.
And Derek, your thoughts about would more bipartisanship the party
is not fighting with each other so much, but actually
working together make a big difference in terms of getting
big things done.
Speaker 8 (21:06):
I think the answer is definitely yes. But the real
question is how does that happen? And maybe it's interesting
to look at some places where you do see bipartisanship
right now to take a little bit of a lesson right.
David Leonhardt fenew York Times wrote this really interesting column
maybe one or two years ago may be called a
New Washington consensus. It was about the idea that when
(21:26):
it comes to certain laws like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
to a certain extent that shifts in Science Act, some
laws that had to do with Ukraine, and some laws
that have to do with national security visa EA China,
there's like a surprising amount of by partisanship, especially under Biden.
And what that tells me is that domestic politics is
(21:47):
going to encourage polarization, but where the parties tend to
come together is when they perceive an external threat. Like
there's more bipartisanship on issues related to China than on
issues related to, say, or sports. So I think I
think that's that's just like I don't have a formula
for by partisanship. I think it's far beyond my talents
(22:08):
as an analyst, but I do think that, like, it
is interesting to note that the thing that seems to
be a stimulus for by partisanship is external threats for
better or for ill, And maybe there's a lesson there
in terms of pitching ideas in order to garner by
port bypartisan support.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Let's go to Roger who's in McCall Idaho, Hi Roger,
go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 13 (22:34):
Oh hi, thank you, Yeah, I was calling. I used
to be the planning director in Missoula, Montana, and the
mayor there, the late Great John Enga, used to say
Missoula is the Native American word meaning no. And the
zoning ordinance there, which was based on the Hoover Administration's
(22:55):
Department of Commerce Model Zone zoning Ordinance, which most American
communities are. You know, when something bad happened, the city
council passed a law making it difficult to do again
and again and again, and it became this kind of
Rube Goldberg way of saying no to that just about anything.
And we had the most progressive, comprehensive plan on the
(23:16):
planet and then rules that dated back to Herbert Hoover.
So what we did, what we worked on was, rather
than making it difficult to do the wrong thing, let's
make it ridiculously easy to do the right thing. I
think we need to see more of that here in
this country.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
How do you do that, just quickly, Roger, how do
you make it ridiculously easy to do the right thing?
Just give me an example.
Speaker 13 (23:40):
You don't stop with the vision. You know, there's so
many cities and counties and communities around the country that
put a lot of time into putting a comprehensive plan together,
a plan for the future. The city council passes it
and then they walk off and they don't bother with
dotting the eyes and crossing the t's of putting the
regulations together. That may that vision easy to do.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, Roger, thank you. Derek. You know you have a
line in your book that gets to this. You say,
it doesn't matter what gets spent, it matters what gets built.
Speaker 8 (24:14):
Yeah, that's exactly true. I mean, Montana's done a really
interesting job. I mean Montana Miracle, a famous set of
the housing builds passed in twenty three or twenty twenty four.
That you had some some movement on Adu's accessory dwelling units.
I believe you also had some streamlining to the permitting process.
And it's it's it's the latter that I think is
most important. That the that Roger was talking about. You
(24:37):
have to make it fast. You know, a lot these
these these houses, this energy, it's built by companies and
delay is money. Delay is time, and time is money,
and so anything that accelerates the process is going to
seem to companies like saving them money. So if you
want to make it cheap, you want to make it fast.
And I think that that more city planners and more
(24:58):
mayors and city councils to think really deeply about, Okay,
if what we want is more housing, how do we
make it ridiculously fast for companies to get through the
process of permitting and beginning and any construction.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Tolliver. I know some comments are coming in online.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah, okay, So this is Jeff in Columbia, South Carolina.
He says, the reason underlying all of this lack of
building of affordable housing infrastructure and energy infrastructure is baby boomers.
They have been the pig and the python. The pig
and the python, write that one down their whole lives.
When they were young, we built school, suburbs, universities, and
all the infrastructure needed to support this huge generation.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Derek, what do you think about that blaming the baby boomers?
Speaker 8 (25:43):
Well, look, baby boomers are of a certain age right
now that they are a lot of homeowners, and to
the extent that part of the reason why we don't
have more housing and a lot of tents innis cities
is nimbiism. Homeowners who are against building in their own backyards. Yeah,
maybe it is the case that sort of disproportionately boomer
homeowners across America are a major impediment two housing abundance.
(26:07):
That's possible. But I also feel like, as a political statement,
you don't want to be demonizing like eighty million people.
At the same time, I prefer to see this as
a problem that is sensitive to persuasion rather than demonizing
whole generations. You know, I'm a member of the millennial generation.
(26:28):
I'm very.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
All sorts of things.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, I remember how we are. The avocado toast
that we were buying in twenty fourteen are ruining the economy.
I mean, so this is this is maybe why I'm
like a little bit once burnt twice shy when it
comes to t geners, generation generalizations, I guess is what
I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Now, I just make my own avocado toast. It's very easy.
You just take a little bit of avocado, some olive oil, lemon, salt,
and pepper on the toast. Done, and it's a lot
cheaper than buying it out at the restaurant. Let's go
to Let's go to Annie, who's in Barrington, Rhode Island. Hi, Annie,
welcome to the middle. What do you think.
Speaker 14 (27:09):
Annie, I think that we're being presented with false Hello.
Can you hear me?
Speaker 13 (27:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, go ahead Annie, can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yep?
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Hello?
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 14 (27:19):
I think we're being presented by false choices, both by
both the writer and also the guests, because it's not
too many regulations or no regulations. Because we need regulations
to some extent. You have to tell people what the
regulations are for, and then do they want them, so, yes,
(27:39):
let's tear everything up. And but then you say, oh,
but that means you have really dirty water and your
kids can't breathe and they have asthma. So I think
it's not fair to say fewer regulations. The other issue
is I have no problem with blaming the baby boomers.
And people are really selfish and they want to keep
what they have, and so one incentive could be give
(28:04):
them the ability of incentives to take the three acre
property they have in in western Massachusetts and say we
will give you incentives to actually build small cottages or
something like that, or something else, or elderly people who
have far more real estate than they can afford you
(28:25):
know they're real estate rich, but they can't pay the taxes. Well,
it's sick. Can we use your property to do that?
But the problem with getting rid of regulations is that
they're there for a reason.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
Yes, I do agree that well, and I get away
with them.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I would bet that Derek actually would agree with
you on the on the need for regulation. But Derek,
how do you answer Annie that you don't want to
throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of regulations.
Speaker 8 (28:51):
Yeah, I mean this is this is a common question
about about the book and about our politics, which is
are you just against all regulations? The answer is obviously no,
not against all regulations, but media a harder question to
answer is how do you decide which environmental regulations your
for and which environmental regulations you think are getting in
(29:12):
the way of, ironically the cause of environmentalism. So here's
the way I think about it. There's aspects of the
Clean Air and Water Act that are outcome based regulations.
They say, from a parts per million perspective, the air
has to be this clean and the water has to
be this clean, and the tailpipes can't have as level
of emissions. But there's other environmental regulations that essentially exist
(29:34):
to make it easy for neighbors to use environmental assessment
and environmental review to stop the construction of anything that
changes the physical world around them, and that ironically has
the result of blocking solar farms and wind turbines and
transmission lines, all of which would help us build a
(29:55):
clean energy economy. So that's the distinction between I think
and out become based regulation, which I tend to support,
in a process based regulation which can ultimately become the
tool of the moneyed elite to simply have their way.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, Tolliver, there have been a lot of calls from
both parties to do what we've been talking about, build
more housing for Americans, and especially affordable housing.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah, and sometimes people say they want housing. But what
are the words not in my backyard? Nimby?
Speaker 13 (30:28):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
That may have been a new phrase back in this
nineteen eighty eight news report.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
It's called nimby not in my backyard.
Speaker 15 (30:36):
City planners say the attitude is spreading and causing widespread
social disruption. A lot of the nimby is a manifest
itself in the stuff that's clearly unacceptable, solid waste dumps
or prisons. But there are things that really are very benign,
and yet everywhere you go people say, yeah, we need
a library, you know, we need a daycare center, or
(30:59):
we need an airport, but we never want it in
our own neighborhood.
Speaker 16 (31:03):
Yards.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Who's got yards. I'm in a city, man, We got
we got parking.
Speaker 13 (31:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So then you don't have to worry about this problem.
It's not it's not for you, Tolliver, not back lore
of the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson,
and this hour we're asking you how can government work
better to solve the big issues we face. You can
call us at eight four four four Middle. That's eight
four four four six four three three five three. You
(31:28):
can also reach out to us at listen Toothmiddle dot com.
My guest is Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson, whose new
book is called Abundance. Derek, I want to ask you
one more thing about affordable housing, which you obviously touch
on a lot of other topics in here that I
want to get to. But one other thing is what
do you think is the connection between the availability of
affordable housing and homelessness, which so many cities are seeing
(31:51):
because many people would look at the homeless issue and say, Oh,
it's about the government benefits that some homeless get in
some city, that's why there are more homeless in some
place or others. Or it's a mental health issue. But
what about the connection just between the affordability of a
city and the amount of homeless people who end up there.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yeah, this is a good, deep question, and I am
persuaded by the idea that homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem.
This is why, in a nutshell, mental health issues are national.
There are people with schizophrenia in every state. There are
thousands of people with schizophrenia in practically every state. There
(32:37):
are all sorts of issues of economic insecurity that are
national as well. But homelessness tends to be very spiky.
It's much much higher in some cities than others, and
in those cities you do tend to see evidence of
housing scarcity, not just high homelessness, but also low vacancy rates.
(32:59):
Vacancy rates are sort of industry term for the amount
of housing stock that's not currently occupied by an owner
or a renter. And what this tells me is that
like life is hard, and there's a lot of people
who maybe live at the margin of being homed. They're
in one place and out of another. And in that
game of musical chairs, when there's more chairs that are open,
(33:19):
it's easier to lose your housing in one place and
find it than another. But in cities where there aren't
enough chairs for the game of musical chairs, it's going
to happen. There's going to be people who are left out,
and those are the people that we see on the streets.
So I like to see. I am persuaded by the
case that homelessness is profoundly a housing issue.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
There are a lot of people who agree. I have
done a lot of reporting on homelessness in my career,
and there are many people who agree with you about that.
Let's go to Chris, who's in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hi, Chris,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
Hi. Hello, I'll give the up FRONTO. I'm a boomer.
I don't think my generation cause of all evil. I
would say the problemsy is that our dysfunctional government has
to do with the absolute inability to compromise. You have
(34:17):
two parties for the most part, and they are absolutely
unwilling to give ground. You know, it's give it to
me my way, or I'm taking my ball back and
going home. You know, in the city I live in,
it's you know, dominated by liberals, and they you know,
(34:39):
if you don't do it their way, you don't get things.
I've a property and they because the city won't let them.
So it's I think you have to be able to compromise,
and the way we are right now, people will refuse
(35:01):
to do it. They just will meet in the middle.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, thank you very much for that, Chris. And at
the national level, of course, we see that right now, Derek,
of people not just unwilling to compromise, but retribution against
people taking people out just because the previous administration put
them in. We see just a lot of funding being
cut just because it had to do with Biden's priorities
(35:26):
as opposed to Trump's priorities. Now, what do you think about.
Speaker 8 (35:28):
That, Well, I think it's awful, and I think it's
incredibly stupid and incredibly counter productive. I mean, what Trump
and Trump's advisors tend to say over and over again
about these terraffs is that it's all about restoring manufacturing
in areas that are critical to our national interest. Well,
if you wanted to reassure in areas critical to a
(35:50):
national interest, you know surely you'd be interusted in, say
building nuclear power or building advanced computer chips. But the
Trump administration, because it hates the concept of progressivism and
Biden so much, is also dismantling the Department of Energy
Loan Programs Office, which is the number one institution for
funding nuclear power. They're dismantling the Chips and Science Act,
(36:14):
which is responsible for building the fabs, the factories that
make the most advanced computer chips. And so you have
this level of negative polarization and shrub administration, this level
of hatred really that is so blinded policymakers on the
right right now that they cannot see that their attempts
(36:36):
to dismantle Biden's legacy are actually getting in their own
way and keeping them from, say, building nuclear power and
advanced computer chips. It's madness, but it's the kind of
madness that only comes from deciding that you hate something
more than you want to achieve anything.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Let's go to Brooks, who's in Greenville, South Carolina. High Brooks,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 17 (37:03):
Hey, I feel like like a part of this discussion
whenever you're talking about efficiency or like how something can
work better, that gets missed is kind of the idea
that efficiency sometimes can be an illusion and that you know,
efficient what seems efficient is really efficient at passing the
(37:24):
buck or you know, outsourcing something. And so, you know,
to me, when I think about our government and maybe
what's failed as I think about competitive federalism particularly, you
have all these different layers of governments, and it seems
like we've taken the approach that it's easier to dangle
money than it is to dangle regulation. And I feel
(37:48):
like due to the lack of synergy between local governments
and state governments and federal governments, we get a lot
of inefficient spending because you know, funding goes to groups
that put together the best grant applications and may not
consider more holistic needs for funding and those sorts of things.
(38:10):
So I just kind of wanted to bring that up,
and you know, if some of that might have been
covered in the book or anything like that, Yeah, Eric.
Speaker 7 (38:21):
You know.
Speaker 8 (38:23):
A little bit like at a high level, at a
high level, a lot of this is in the book.
You know, I think I think it's important to say, like,
the book doesn't try to talk about absolutely everything. You know,
one of the bigger criticisms of the book actually sort
of you know, gone around the country and talked about it,
is that, you know, people tend to have their own
big thing that they want to see in a book
(38:44):
about the future of liberalism. And some people want to
see more antitrust or some people want to see more
anti oligarchy, some people want more focus on on housing,
some people want much less focused on housing. And this book,
i think is overall is a fairly seffaritely narrow message.
The narrow message is that they're a handful of really
(39:07):
wonderful progressive priorities housing, clean energy, the importance of science
and therefore the importance of scientific invention. And we're interested
in understanding how these systems work and in understanding how
sometimes we get in our own way, that is to say,
how liberals and the liberal preference for process sometimes gets
(39:29):
in our own way. And one big part of that,
one big sort of takeaway from our analysis of how
long many sort of progressive processes take is its speed
really is a progressive priority in so many cases in
housing and clean energy, in building, just about anything in
the physical world that the column is talking about. It's
(39:49):
just really damn hard to do things. And if we
want to do is build in this country houses, manufacturing,
we have to do it faster.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Let's go to Eric, who's in Chicago. Hi, Eric, Welcome
to the middle. What do you think government could how
could it work better and achieve the goals that it
wants to.
Speaker 16 (40:10):
Well, you know, I'm I'm an architect and a neighborhood
president in the city of Chicago, and you know, so
the conversation about zoning and regulations and and is particularly
interesting to me. You know, I think there's some issues
with you know, as far as kind of the conversation
about the de regulating or or eliminating some of our
(40:35):
protections of zoning. As a neighborhood leader, you know, zoning
is is you know, the sometimes the only tool that uh,
you know, my neighbors, my community has to protect itself
from inappropriate development or in the case you know, a
few about a decade ago, I lived in Kansas City. Similarly,
(40:57):
I was a neighborhood leader there. You lived in a
neighborhood that was constantly under threat of large developments, you know,
gobbling up small single family homes and and and really
changing the character of the neighborhood, but also making it
it it inaccessible for the people that live there. And
(41:17):
so you know, zoning is I think uh has has
been used or can be used as a protection for that.
The other thing I noticed a lot of work in
different municipalities around the country is that, you know, a
lot of our communities has privatized their plan review and
the thought is that that might you know, speed up
(41:38):
the process or make the process more efficient in other ways,
and and that has really not been the case in
my observation. One thing I do see is that you know,
when you have a conversation about making government smaller and
about deregulation, that never really like what we're seeing in Washington, DC,
is talking about you know, eliminating jobs, getting rid of
the people that would be helping to speed up these processes.
(42:02):
So in these communities that privatize plan review or zoning review,
that that you know that that's a cause for you know,
eliminating some of those positions that are very important to
keeping the process moving efficiently.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, well, Eric, that's a great point, and let me
take that to Derek. Derek as we watch DOGE go
into department after department and cut things, do you see
any way that that's going to make things more efficient,
make government work better, to be eliminating so many positions
and probably a lot of regulation in the process.
Speaker 8 (42:37):
No, absolutely not, No does doesn't know what it's doing.
Dogs is profoundly in that as an organization. It's really
stunning to me how little they understand it of what
they're cutting. You can see this just made plane in
in their outcomes. At every single organization, every single department
(42:58):
that they've fired people or dismissed people, they've had to
eventually call them back because they realized they were firing
or dismissing absolutely essential workers. Right, So they're shooting first
and then you know asking questions second, you look what's
happening at the FDA. They want to increase the efficiency
of the FDA. What does efficiency at the FDA mean?
(43:20):
You know, ultimately, what you want is for the FDA
to approve the drugs that make us healthy and to
exclude and not approve the drugs that aren't safe or
aren't effective. What you need to do that are people.
But instead, because DOGE only understands the logic of cutting.
They dismissed hundreds and hundreds at FDA workers that now
(43:44):
many folks in the biotech industry are saying the result
of that will slow down drug approval. They've made the
process less efficient by cutting it, not more efficient by
cutting it. So so many of these problems, whether it's
housing or clean energy, or to accelerate drug approvals at
the federal level, This is not about having an ideology
(44:05):
that's the key that opens every single lock. Jess, Actually
understand what it is you're doing and what is this
you're trying to do. I don't think those does Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I'm looking at the phone lines and they've been all
full from all over the country. But I know you're
looking at the comments coming in online and they're coming
in fast too.
Speaker 13 (44:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Well, I'm gonna start with this petty one, real quick.
Robin and Houston says. On tonight's show, Jeremy mentioned the
lack of zoning in Houston. I live in Houston, and
while this true, Houston doesn't have much commercial and residential zoning.
You cannot build a strip club next to a nursery
the middle. You cannot bud a strip club next to
a nursery Kara and No Minnesota says we boomers would
love to give up our homes if appropriate elder community
(44:46):
housing were available, and Trician Chicago says people are moving
to places with little regulation because jobs move there because
there's little regulation, including low pay, no union's, little environmental
you guessed it, regulations.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
All right, and let's get to other Call in Stacy,
who's in Morrisville, Vermont. Hi, Stacy, go ahead with your.
Speaker 7 (45:04):
Thoughts, Hi.
Speaker 18 (45:07):
I just think the priorities are on that we spend
too much money on bonds to kill people instead of
building what we need here.
Speaker 13 (45:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
I mean that's a good point, and that you think
that that's keeping us from being from achieving our goals.
The wars that have been going on over the years
around the world.
Speaker 18 (45:28):
Oh yeah, I mean think of all the money and
think about the horrible things happening to people that you know,
it's just money could be better spent. And I just
want to say, I'm an old grandma hippie and I
think we need to really start respecting Mother Earth more.
And I know technology is real popular, but I think
(45:52):
everybody needs to go out and hug a tree. That's it.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, Stacy, thank you, And and you know, Derek, that
brings us to a very interesting point that you bring
up in this book, and we haven't really talked about
that much, which is that inventing our way out of
some of the problems that we face, including the climate crisis,
is something that the government should be doing, and maybe
it's going to be something that we don't even know
exists yet that gets us out of these issues that
(46:18):
we're dealing with. Do you think that that could happen
in the United States, that maybe there's a new power source,
fusion power or something like that comes along and saves
the day and we don't have to worry about any
of this anymore.
Speaker 8 (46:30):
Yeah, I think it's possible. I think it's been very,
very hard. I think energy is hard, chemistry is hard,
physics is hard. This is a lot of hard science.
But I do think it's possible, and I think it's
worth remembering how we got here. In a world where
we had never invented the fotovl TXL, where we had
never invented solar energy, it wouldn't be possible to lean
(46:50):
on solar energy the way this country and so many
countries around the world are, but technology creates new possibilities,
creating solar energy right Inventing the efficient photovolta Excel, which
I believe happened at Bell Labs, took a really dedicated
group of scientists working in the institution they felt safe
(47:12):
in that they didn't think was going to implode. This
is Dell Labs, the R and D factory of AT
and T in the mold of the twentieth century. You
know what that tells me is that really good science
can be done when scientists are left alone to be scientists.
And right now we are certainly not doing that. And
the trumpdministration is going after Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern Cornell. They're
(47:35):
cutting between thirty and fifty percent from the NIH and
NSF budgets. People at the NIH and at universities across
the country don't know if you know, a new keyword
search is going to turn up some word in their
paper that's going to be looked on just favorably by
the administration. This is not the way to make scientists
(47:55):
feel like they can take big risks.
Speaker 9 (47:57):
This is.
Speaker 8 (47:59):
I think a very dangerous way to try to invent
the future.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I've just got about a minute left here, Derek, But
let me ask you one more question. You write in
the book that liberals need to recognize when the government
is failing, conservatives need to recognize when it is needed.
What do you think the political middle should be doing.
Speaker 8 (48:18):
I think the middle should be curious. I think the
middle should be curious. I think the middle should you know,
one of the one of the virtues of not naming
yourself after a party, right, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican,
is that you're always deciding, right, You're you're you're hopefully
always thinking, and that requires intense curiosity about what's happening
(48:41):
in the world and which parties are following up their
goals with action. I think that I think the curiosity
should be the Watchford of the of the middle.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I guess that is Derek Thompson, a staff writer for
The Atlantic, co author of the new book Abundance. Derek,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, and
don't forget. The Middle is available as a podcast in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeart app or wherever
you listen to podcasts and come into your feed. In
the next few days, an episode of our weekly podcast
extra one thing Trump did, where we will talk about
(49:13):
US Canada relations following the national election in Canada, which
was all about Trump. Next week we'll be right back
here asking you what improvements still need to be made
in society for people with disabilities.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
As always, you can call in at eight four four
four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three
three five three. You can also reach out and listen
to the Middle dot com. You can also sign up
for our free weekly newsletter and by Middle Merge, which
just is going to list Houston zoning regulations.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Oh boy. From here on now, The Middle is brought
to you by LONGNOK Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media
in Urbana, Illinois, and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander,
Sam Burmas, DAWs, John Barth, An Akadestler, and Brandon Kondritz.
Our technical director is Jason Kropt. Thanks to our satellite
radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the more than four
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people across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm
(50:03):
Jeremy Hobson, and I'll talk to you next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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