Abundance, with Jack Meyer

Today we are joined by Jack Meyer, an economics masters student at Oxford, as well as an aspiring political economist and economic historian. His current areas of study include innovation, development and inequality. You can find him on Twitter/X @jackbmeyer and on Substack, where he publishes the newsletter Public Works. On this episode, we take on Abundance, a bestselling book published earlier this year by the liberal commentators Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Jack has written a great review of the book on his Substack, which you can check out here. We use his review as a jumping-off point for an expansive discussion of the book and contemporary American politics. Topics discussed include: * Abundance and state capacity * The policy program implied by Abundance, and its limits * The cross-ideological appeal of Abundance * Zohran Mamdani as an Abundance candidate * How Abundance could figure into the future trajectory of the Democratic Party Show Notes A Note on Abundance (Jack Meyer, 9/15/25) The thesis statement of Abundance: “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.” (pg 3) The Meager Agenda of Abundance Liberals (Washington Monthly, 3/23/25) For a critique of the Abundance approach to state capacity: To Get Abundance, We Need to Discipline Capital (Jacobin, 6/17/25) Credits Theme music by our youngest brother Tate. Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe