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How an Abundance Agenda Could Transform America

America has a scarcity problem. Is it time to change the way we think about growth?

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We live in an age of political, economic, and cultural exhaustion. For the past few years, the economy has been steamrolled by shortages—of masks, then tests, then vaccines, then cars and baby formula. Our leaders do too much venting about what’s wrong in the world and not enough inventing to make it right. An age of extraordinary communications technology has coincided with an era of declining physical-world progress.

So what’s the solution here? Since the beginning of 2022, I’ve been exploring what an abundance agenda might look like for the U.S. That’s the topic I’m focusing on today, with this collection of articles that make the case for this new philosophy of the future. If you like what you see, I hope you’ll read or save these essays, and then consider subscribing to my newsletter, Work in Progress, for weekly dispatches on this idea. —Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he publishes the newsletter Work in Progress, on science, tech, and culture. He is the founder and host of the news podcast Plain English and the previous host of the podcast Crazy/Genius, which won the 2020 Publisher Podcast Award for best podcast of the year. A news analyst with NPR, Derek appears weekly on the national news show “Here and Now” and is also a contributor to CBS News. His first book, the national best seller Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was named the 2018 Book of the Year by the American Marketing Association. He is working on his second book, about what the history of progress can teach us about creating a world of abundance. Derek lives in Washington, D.C.