Ariel

“[Democrats] have spent decades fighting for universal insurance, while Republicans have consistently fought its expansion. But while the dominant fight in Washington is typically about how we buy health care, we rarely talk about the health care that exists to be bought.”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance

“Today's politics are suffused with cynicism and pessimism about government because a way of living sold to us as good and achievable is no longer good, or no longer achievable. in 2016, the rise of Bernie Sanders on the left and the rise of Donald Trump on the right revealed how many Americans had stopped believing that the life they had been promised was achievable. What both the socialist left and the populist-authoritarian right understood was that the story that had been told by the establishments of both parties, the story that had kept their movements consigned to the margins, had come to its end.”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance

“There are reasons these rules are in place. No-bid contracts can enable corruption as well as speed. There are reasons not to put down asphalt when it's raining. But in turning these questions from choices into rules, we have taken discretion and judgment away from people like Carroll. We prefer that projects go badly by the book. We minimize some risks but make delay and high costs routine.”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance

“We are in a period in American history, when the decline of one political order makes space for another. The crack up was decades in the making. It started with the Great Recession, which shattered a broad belief in deregulated markets. The climate crisis revealed how much the profit motive missed. The aftermath of normalizing trade with China proved that the prophets of free trade understood neither China nor America.
Throughout the 2010s, a slow economic recovery fueled public resentment of inequality, and an affordability crisis gathered steam. In 2020, the pandemic obliterated many Americans' trust in government, or what was left of it. And between 2021 and 2024, inflation brought national attention to our interlocking crises of scarcity, supply, and unaffordability. For years, the boundaries of American politics had felt fixed, even settled. But now they are falling.”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance