Notes

Introduction: Beyond Scarcity

  1. 1. Laffer Curve Napkin, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, September 14, 1974, https://www.si.edu/object/laffer-curve-napkin%3Anmah_1439217; “Can Countries Lower Taxes and Raise Revenues?,” Economist, June 18, 2019, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/18/can-countries-lower-taxes-and-raise-revenues.
  2. 2. President Jimmy Carter, State of the Union Address Delivered Before a Joint Session of the Congress, January 19, 1978, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-state-the-union-address-delivered-before-joint-session-the-congress-1.
  3. 3. President William Jefferson Clinton, State of the Union Address, US Capitol, January 23, 1996, https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/other/sotu.html.
  4. 4. Steven Teles, Samuel Hammond, and Daniel Takash, “Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance,” Niskanen Center, September 9, 2021, https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-subsidizing-costs-while-restricting-supply-drives-americas-fiscal-imbalance/.
  5. 5. Derek Fidler and Hicham Sabir, “The Cost of Housing Is Tearing Our Society Apart,” World Economic Forum, January 9, 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/why-housing-appreciation-is-killing-housing/; Alexander Hermann, “Housing Perspectives,” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, January 22, 2024, https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0.
  6. 6. KFF, “2023 Employer Health Benefits Survey,” October 18, 2023, https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2023-section-1-cost-of-health-insurance/#figure11.
  7. 7. Digest of Education Statistics, table 330.10: Average Undergraduate Tuition and Fees and Room and Board Rates Charged for Full-Time Students in Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions, by Level and Control of Institution: Selected Years, 1963–64 Through 2018–19, National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_330.10.asp; Melanie Hanson, “Average Cost of College by Year,” EducationData.org, September 9, 2024, https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year; Melanie Hanson, “Average Cost of College by State,” EducationData.org, September 16, 2024, https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-state; College Board, “Trends in College Pricing: Highlights,” 2023–24 school year, date of report: 2024, https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing/highlights.
  8. 8. Eric Cutler, “True Cost of Child Care by State,” January 23, 2024, https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/cost-of-child-care-in-all-50-states-for-2022/.
  9. 9. Annie Lowrey, “The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America: In One of the Best Decades the American Economy Has Ever Recorded, Families Were Bled Dry,” Atlantic, February 7, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affordability-crisis-breaking-america/606046/.
  10. 10. “Remarks by President Biden on the December 2021 Jobs Report,” January 7, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/07/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-december-2021-jobs-report/.
  11. 11. Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (London: Verso, 2019), 150–52.
  12. 12. Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, 10.
  13. 13. Andriy Blokhin, “The 5 Countries That Produce the Most Carbon Dioxide (CO2),” Investopedia, July 26, 2024, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092915/5-countries-produce-most-carbon-dioxide-co2.asp; Wolfgang Fengler, Indermit Gill, and Homi Kharas, “Making Emissions Count in Country Classifications,” Brookings Institution, September 7, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/making-emissions-count-in-country-classifications/; UN Environment Programme, “Emissions Gap Report 2023,” https://www.unep.org/interactives/emissions-gap-report/2023/#section_0; “Global Emissions,” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/; Kamwoo Lee, Jia Li, and Divyanshi Wadhwa, “From Climate Scient to Global Action: Who Contributes Most to Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions?,” October 11, 2023, World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/climate-science-global-action-who-contributes-most-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
  14. 14. “Renewables Competitiveness Accelerates, Despite Cost Inflation,” International Renewable Energy Agency, press release, August 29, 2023, https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2023/Aug/Renewables-Competitiveness-Accelerates-Despite-Cost-Inflation.
  15. 15. State of California Air Resources Board, Advanced Clean Cars II Regulations, Resolution 22-12, August 25, 2022, https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/barcu/board/books/2022/082522/prores22-12.pdf.
  16. 16. US Energy Information Administration, “Most U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Were Built Between 1970 and 1990,” April 27, 2017, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30972; US Energy Information Administration, “How Old Are U.S. Nuclear Power Plants, and When Was the Newest One Built?,” May 8, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=228&t=21; US Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Commercial Nuclear Capacity Comes from Reactors Built Primarily Between 1970 and 1990,” June 30, 2011, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=2030; World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in the USA,” August 27, 2024, https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power; Nuclear Energy Institute, “Decommissioning Status for Shutdown U.S. Nuclear Plants,” US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, US Department of Energy, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, updated August 2022, https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/decommissioning-status-for-shutdown-us-plants; Elesia Fasching, Tyler Hodge, and Slade Johnson, “First New U.S. Nuclear Reactor Since 2016 Is Now in Operation,” US Energy Information Administration, August 1, 2023, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57280; Georgia Power, “Vogtle Unit 4 Enters Commercial Operation,” press release, April 29, 2024, https://www.georgiapower.com/company/news-hub/press-releases/vogtle-unit-4-enters-commercial-operation.html; Bechtel, “America’s Next Nuclear Power Plant Begins Construction,” press release, June 10, 2024, https://www.bechtel.com/newsroom/press-releases/americas-next-nuclear-power-plant-begins-construction/.
  17. 17. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 157.
  18. 18. Tyler Cowen, “What Libertarianism Has Become and Will Become—State Capacity Libertarianism,” Marginal Revolution, January 1, 2020, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/what-libertarianism-has-become-and-will-become-state-capacity-libertarianism.html.
  19. 19. “Party Affiliation of the Mayors of the 100 Largest Cities,” Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_the_100_largest_cities.
  20. 20. “California Elected Officials,” 270toWin, https://www.270towin.com/elected-officials/california.
  21. 21. “Cost of Living Index by State 2024,” World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/cost-of-living-index-by-state.
  22. 22. Bruce E. Cain and Preeti Hehmeyer, “California’s Population Drain,” Stanford University Institute for Economic Policy Research, October 2023, https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/californias-population-drain; Alix Martichoux, “Leaving California: These Were the Top Destinations for Californians Who Moved in 2022,” KTLA 5, October 20, 2023, https://ktla.com/news/local-news/are-californians-still-taking-over-texas-new-census-data-reveals-where-people-are-moving-most/.
  23. 23. William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), Kindle, 6.
  24. 24. Christine Leonard, “Map Shows Which California Demographic Shifted Most Toward Trump,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 14, 2024, https://www.sfchronicle.com/election/article/trump-vote-california-county-19897935.php.
  25. 25. Kevin Schaul and Kati Perry, “How Counties Are Shifting in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Washington Post, November 6, 2024, updated November 22, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2024/11/05/compare-2020-2024-presidential-results/.
  26. 26. US Census Bureau, “State-to-State Migration Flows,” https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html.
  27. 27. Jerusalem Demsas, “The Democrats Are Committing Partycide,” Atlantic, November 14, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrat-states-population-stagnation/680641/.
  28. 28. Derek Thompson, “The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning for Progressives,” Atlantic, August 5, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/the-urban-family-exodus-is-a-warning-for-progressives/679350/.
  29. 29. David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 164.
  30. 30. Potter, People of Plenty, 173.
  31. 31. From the title of her book: Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

1. Grow

  1. 1. Horace Greeley, The Autobiography of Horace Greeley (New York: E. B. Treat, 1872), 38, 50.
  2. 2. Potter, People of Plenty, 94.
  3. 3. Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 132.
  4. 4. Brinkley, The End of Reform, 133.
  5. 5. Housing and Home Finance Agency, Washington, DC, “The Housing Situation—1950: An Analysis of Preliminary Results of the 1950 Housing Census,” February 1951, 3, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Housing-Situation-1951.pdf.
  6. 6. OECD, “Housing Stock and Construction,” figure HM1.1.1, 2, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/data/datasets/affordable-housing-database/hm1-1-housing-stock-and-construction.pdf.
  7. 7. Chamber of Commerce, “Cities with the Most House Poor Homeowners,” https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/cities-with-the-most-house-poor-homeowners/.
  8. 8. Annie Lowrey, “The Wrong-Apartment Problem: Why a Good Economy Feels So Bad,” Atlantic, July 22, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/us-economy-labor-market-inflation-housing/674790/.
  9. 9. Glaeser, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), Kindle, 131.
  10. 10. Diane Cardwell, “Mayor Says New York Is Worth the Cost,” New York Times, January 8, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/nyregion/mayor-says-new-york-is-worth-the-cost.html.
  11. 11. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, Kindle, 6.
  12. 12. David Stringer, “Inside Foxconn’s Plan to Build EVs,” Bloomberg, November 2, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-11-02/what-does-foxconn-make-iphones-now-but-evs-are-on-the-way-big-take?sref=VpNSse6l.
  13. 13. US Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, Apple Inc, for the quarterly period ended April 1, 2023, https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/52f2576b-2775-4676-b40c-a63e2b5d8e60.pdf; Matthew Johnston, “How Apple Makes Money,” Investopedia, June 27, 2024, https://www.investopedia.com/how-apple-makes-money-4798689.
  14. 14. “Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results,” January 30, 2024, https://abc.xyz/assets/95/eb/9cef90184e09bac553796896c633/2023q4-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf.
  15. 15. US Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-K, Tesla, Inc., for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000162828024002390/tsla-20231231-gen.pdf.
  16. 16. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, Kindle, 6.
  17. 17. Katie Deighton, “Goldman Sachs Embeds Software Developers Deeper into the Business,” Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-embeds-software-developers-deeper-into-the-business-11666218724.
  18. 18. Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs (New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), Kindle, loc. 1641.
  19. 19. Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, Kindle, loc. 1673.
  20. 20. Jackson Walker, “Zoom CEO Advises Employees to Return to Office or Risk Losing ‘Trust,’ Report Says,” CBS Austin, August 24, 2023, https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/zoom-ceo-advises-employees-to-return-to-office-or-risk-losing-trust-report-says-remote-work-telework-conferencing-virtual-hybrid-economy-employee-face-to-face.
  21. 21. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, Kindle, 37.
  22. 22. Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, Kindle, loc. 173.
  23. 23. Raj Chetty et al., “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” NBER Working Paper 22910, December 2016, http://www.nber.org/papers/w22910andDOI10.3386/w22910.
  24. 24. Derek Thompson, “The Secret to Reclaiming the American Dream,” Atlantic, August 26, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/08/american-dream-raj-chetty-friendship/671235/.
  25. 25. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” June 2014, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/files/mobility_geo.pdf.
  26. 26. Alexander M. Bell, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen, “Do Tax Cuts Produce More Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives vs. Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors,” NBER Working Paper 25493, January 2019, http://www.nber.org/papers/w25493.
  27. 27. Peter Ganong and Daniel W. Shoag, “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?,” NBER Working Paper 23609, July 2017, 2, DOI 10.3386/w23609.
  28. 28. Ganong and Shoag, “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?,” 4–5.
  29. 29. Ganong and Shoag, “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?,” 3.
  30. 30. See Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967).
  31. 31. Wendell Cox, “2022 Residential Building Permits by Housing Market,” March 14, 2023, NewGeography, https://www.newgeography.com/content/007766-2022-residential-building-permits-housing-market.
  32. 32. William A. Fischel, Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2015), Kindle, 190.
  33. 33. Fischel, Zoning Rules!, Kindle, 195.
  34. 34. Fischel, Zoning Rules!, Kindle, 214.
  35. 35. Meghan McCarty Carino, “Life in This Iconic Mid-Century Suburb Shows How California Dreams Are Shrinking,” LAist, July 2, 2018, https://laist.com/news/kpcc-archive/life-in-this-iconic-mid-century-suburb-shows-how-c.
  36. 36. “City of Tomorrow,” The Lakewood Story, City of Lakewood, California, https://www.lakewoodcity.org/About/Our-History/The-Lakewood-Story/02-City-of-Tomorrow.
  37. 37. “Suburban Pioneers,” The Lakewood Story, City of Lakewood, California, https://www.lakewoodcity.org/About/Our-History/The-Lakewood-Story/03-Suburban-Pioneers.
  38. 38. US Census Bureau, “New Privately-Owned Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits in Permit-Issuing Places,” Annual History by State, https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/pdf/annualhistorybystate.pdf.
  39. 39. “California’s Housing Future: Challenges and Opportunities, Final Statewide Housing Assessment 2025,” p. 6, fig. 1.2, https://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/plans-reports/docs/SHA_Final_Combined.pdf.
  40. 40. Jacob Anbinder, “Cities of Amber: Antigrowth Politics and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 1950–2008,” PhD diss., Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 18–19. Regarding “more than fifteen thousand buildings”: Anbinder’s source, Ingrid Gould, Ellen Brian, J. McCabe, Eric Edward Stern, “Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in New York City,” distinguishes between “lots” and “buildings.” See Gould et al., pp. 2, 14 (incl. fig. 2.3) and p. 4, https://furmancenter.org/files/NYUFurmanCenter_50YearsHistoricPresNYC_7MAR2016.pdf.
  41. 41. Mac Taylor, Chas Alamo, and Brian Uhler, “California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences,” Legislative Analyst’s Office, March 17, 2015, https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.pdf.
  42. 42. “New Private Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits for California,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, updated October 24, 2024, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CABPPRIVSA. Also see Kenneth Schrupp, “Why Dallas Permits More Housing Than All of California,” Pacific Research (blog), July 23, 2024, https://www.pacificresearch.org/why-dallas-permits-more-housing-than-all-of-california/.
  43. 43. Margot Kushel and Tiana Moore, “Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness,” University of California–San Francisco, Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, June 2023, https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness.
  44. 44. Heather Mac Donald, “San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless,” City Journal, Autumn 2019, https://www.city-journal.org/article/san-francisco-hostage-to-the-homeless.
  45. 45. Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), Kindle, loc. 1086.
  46. 46. Colburn and Aldern, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Kindle, loc. 1054–1071 and loc. 1166 and fig.8.
  47. 47. Colburn and Aldern, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Kindle, loc. 1238.
  48. 48. Matthew Yglesias, The Rent Is Too Damn High (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).
  49. 49. Matthew Yglesias, “Homelessness Is About Housing,” Slow Boring (Substack), May 17, 2021, https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing.
  50. 50. “Rooming Houses,” American Planning Association, Report No. 105, December 1957, https://www.planning.org/pas/reports/report105.htm, citing the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 18, 1957, p. 20, https://www.newspapers.com/search/results/?keyword=If+rooming+houses+are+permitted+to+spread+to+the+city%27s+&publication-ids=4064.
  51. 51. Yglesias, “Homelessness Is About Housing,” citing “Rooming Houses,” American Planning Association, Report No. 105.
  52. 52. Yglesias, “Homelessness Is About Housing.”
  53. 53. “How Long Does It Take to Save for a House?,” WTF Happened in 1971?, https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/.
  54. 54. Jonathan Skinner, “Housing and Saving in the United States,” NBER Working Paper 3874, October 1991, p. 1, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3874/w3874.pdf.
  55. 55. Fischel, Zoning Rules!, Kindle, 205.
  56. 56. Jerusalem Demsas, “The Homeownership Society Was a Mistake,” Atlantic, December 20, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/homeownership-real-estate-investment-renting/672511/.
  57. 57. Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 46.
  58. 58. Fischel, Zoning Rules!, Kindle, 225.
  59. 59. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the University of Michigan,” May 22, 1964, University of Virginia/Miller Center, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/may-22-1964-remarks-university-michigan.
  60. 60. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: New American Library, 1958), 200.
  61. 61. Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 3.
  62. 62. Federal Highway Administration, “State Motor Vehicle Registrations, by Years, 1900–1995,” https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf.
  63. 63. Jess McNally, “July 26, 1942: L.A. Gets Its First Big Smog,” Wired, July 26, 2010, https://www.wired.com/2010/07/0726la-first-big-smog/.
  64. 64. Elizabeth T. Jacobs, Jefferey L. Burgess, and Mark B. Abbott, “The Donora Smog Revisited: 70 Years After the Event That Inspired the Clean Air Act,” American Journal of Public Health 108, S2 (April 2018): S85–S88, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5922205/.
  65. 65. Devra Lee Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Twenty people “died during the fog itself” (22); fifty more died later, “in the month after the smog lifted” (27).
  66. 66. Nell Porter-Brown, “Paddling the Merrimack in Lowell and Lawrence,” Harvard Magazine, July–August 2017, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/06/reflections-on-a-river.
  67. 67. Lorraine Boissoneault, “The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 19, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/; “The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/story-of-the-fire.htm; “Cuyahoga River Fire,” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University, https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cuyahoga-river-fire.
  68. 68. “Forgotten History: Dooker’s Hollow,” The Historical Dilettante, February 19, 2021, https://historicaldilettante.blogspot.com/2021/02/forgotten-history-dookers-hollow.html.
  69. 69. Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Environmental Issues,” July 14, 1984, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-environmental-issues.
  70. 70. Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors, 8 Cal.3d 247, September 21, 1972, Sac. No. 7924, Supreme Court of California, https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/friends-mammoth-v-board-supervisors-32943; also available at https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1826825.html.
  71. 71. John Zierold, “Environmental Lobbyist in California’s Capital, 1965–1984,” California Legal History Journal 13 (2018): 330–331. An oral history conducted in 1984 by Ann Lage, Sierra Club History Series, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1988, https://www.cschs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Legal-Hist-v.-13-Environ-Oral-History-Zierold.pdf.
  72. 72. Sacramento Bee, October 22, 1972, p. 109, https://www.newspapers.com.
  73. 73. Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 363.
  74. 74. Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 365–66; Anne Jackson, “Agonizing Reappraisal for the Environmental Quality Act,” California Journal 7 (1976): 59; Gladwin Hill, “Environmental Impact Statements, Practically a Revolution,” New York Times, December 5, 1976.
  75. 75. Lewis Mumford, “The Highway and the City,” Architectural Record, April 1958, https://google.it.ao/books?id=DmcWAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA371&dq=editions:HARVARDHWNP7V&lr=&output=html_text; and see Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), 234.
  76. 76. As measured in percentage change. See US Census Bureau, “Booming Cities Decade-to-Decade, 1830–2010,” October 4, 2012, https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/017/508.php.
  77. 77. Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 183.
  78. 78. “American Scene: The Great Wild Californicated West,” Time, August 21, 1972, https://time.com/archive/6815691/american-scene-the-great-wild-californicated-west/.
  79. 79. Gilliam, For Better or for Worse: The Ecology of an Urban Area (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1972), cited by Anbinder, “Cities of Amber,” 207.

2. Build

  1. 1. Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (New York: Vintage Books, 2021), 19, 24.
  2. 2. Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (London: Penguin Books, 2022), Kindle, 32.
  3. 3. Hickel, Less Is More, Kindle, 28, 203.
  4. 4. Hickel, Less Is More, Kindle, 217.
  5. 5. “Global emissions need to fall by 45 to 50 per cent by 2030 in order to ensure temperatures don’t rise above 1.5°C by 2100”: UN Environment Programme, “How Do Countries Measure Greenhouse Gas Emissions?,” citing the Emissions Gap Report, September 13, 2022, https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-do-countries-measure-greenhouse-gas-emissions; Chris Mooney, Naema Ahmed, and John Muyskens, “We Looked at 1,200 Possibilities for the Planet’s Future. These Are Our Best Hope,” Washington Post, December 1, 2022, updated May 22, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2022/global-warming-1-5-celsius-scenarios/.
  6. 6. Hickel, Less Is More, Kindle, 146.
  7. 7. The BBC went back to 2021 and tracked and compared the two years. Efrem Gebreab, Thomas Naadi, Ranga Sirilal, and Becky Dale, “Fuel Protests Gripping More Than 90 Countries,” BBC, October 17, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63185186.
  8. 8. Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly, Natasha Bertrand, M. J. Lee, and Kylie Atwood, “Biden Turns to Countries He Once Sought to Avoid to Find Help Shutting Off Russia’s Oil Money,” CNN, March 8, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/politics/joe-biden-saudi-arabia-venezuela-iran-russia-oil/index.html.
  9. 9. Erik Voeten, “Is There a Green Policy Backlash?,” Good Authority, September 21, 2023, https://goodauthority.org/news/is-there-a-green-policy-backlash/.
  10. 10. Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018), 254–55.
  11. 11. “At any given time, around 130 people were enslaved at Monticello”: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, https://www.monticello.org/slavery/people-enslaved-at-monticello/; Jefferson “enslaved over 600 human beings throughout the course of his life,” four hundred at Monticello, two hundred “on… other properties.” See also Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), and Lisa Mann, “The Enslaved Household of President Thomas Jefferson,” White House Historical Association, November 20, 2019, https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-thomas-jefferson-white-house.
  12. 12. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, November 28, 1796, Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/exhibits-events/blog/i-shudder-at-the-approach-jefferson-on-winter/; Thomas Jefferson to “Mr. Volney,” January 8, 1797, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-29-02-0202.
  13. 13. Hans Rosling, “The Magic Washing Machine,” TEDWomen 2010, December 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine/transcript?subtitle=en.
  14. 14. Hannah Ritchie, “What the History of London’s Air Pollution Can Tell Us About the Future of Today’s Growing Megacities,” Our World in Data,” June 20, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution.
  15. 15. Hannah Ritchie, Not the End of the World: How to Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2024), 48.
  16. 16. “Renewables Competitiveness Accelerates, Despite Cost Inflation,” International Renewable Energy Agency, press release, August 29, 2023, https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2023/Aug/Renewables-Competitiveness-Accelerates-Despite-Cost-Inflation; Felix Creutzig, Jérôme Hilaire, Gregory Nemet, Finn Müller-Hansen, and Jan C. Minx, “Technological Innovation Enables Low Cost Climate Change Mitigation,” Energy Research & Social Science 105 (November 2023): 103276, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629623003365?dgcid=author.
  17. 17. David Wallace-Wells, “What Will We Do with Our Free Power?,” New York Times, August 28, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/opinion/solar-power-free-energy.html
  18. 18. Rupert Way, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy, and J. Doyne Farmer, “Empirically Grounded Technology Forecasts and the Energy Transition,” Joule 6 (September 2022): 2057–082, https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2542-4351%2822%2900410-X.
  19. 19. US Energy Information Administration, “Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2022,” p. 3, table 1a; p. 8, table 1b; p. 9.
  20. 20. Bill McKibben, “In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things,” New Yorker, March 18, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/in-a-world-on-fire-stop-burning-things?_sp=71841c1f-c05f-43bb-8cad-c1176340938e.1727888742505.
  21. 21. “Per Capita CO2 Emissions, 2022,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita; “CO2 Emissions per Capita,” 2022, Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/#google_vignette.
  22. 22. “Per Capita CO2 Emissions, 1979,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?time=1979.
  23. 23. Hannah Ritchie, “How Do CO2 Emissions Compare When We Adjust for Trade?,” Our World in Data, October 7, 2019, https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2.
  24. 24. “I Thought Most of Us Were Going to Die from the Climate Crisis. I Was Wrong,” Guardian, excerpt from Ritchie, Not the End of the World, January 2, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/02/hannah-ritchie-not-the-end-of-the-world-extract-climate-crisis.
  25. 25. Mark Poynting and Esme Stallard, “UK to Finish with Coal Power After 142 Years,” BBC, September 30, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o.
  26. 26. “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Achieves Fusion Ignition,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, December 14, 2022, https://www.llnl.gov/article/49306/lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-achieves-fusion-ignition.
  27. 27. Ezra Klein, “The Dystopia We Fear Is Keeping Us from the Utopia We Deserve,” New York Times, January 8, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/opinion/nuclear-fusion-flying-cars.html.
  28. 28. Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch, “One Billion Machines,” Rewiring America, June 2021, https://www.rewiringamerica.org/research/one-billion-electric-machines-report.
  29. 29. “AI workloads require substantially more energy than traditional computing. Estimates suggest that using ChatGPT requires up to 10x more power than a traditional web search. Further, it seems likely that data centers will be the largest contributor to U.S. power demand growth through the end of this decade”: JPMorgan, “A Strong Economy in a Fragile World,” 2024, https://assets.jpmprivatebank.com/content/dam/jpm-pb-aem/global/en/documents/mid-year-outlook-2024.pdf.
  30. 30. US Energy Information Administration, “What Is U.S. Electricity Generation by Energy Source?,” https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=8.
  31. 31. Bart Pfankuch, “Solar Surge: South Dakota Sees New Interest in Solar Power,” South Dakota News Watch, April 8, 2024, https://www.sdnewswatch.org/south-dakota-solar-power-wind-renewable-energy-electricity/.
  32. 32. Amanda Zhou, “How Clean Is WA’s Electricity? We Lead the Country in One Way,” Seattle Times, February 13, 2024, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/how-clean-is-was-electricity-we-lead-the-country-in-one-way/.
  33. 33. Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy, “Status of Energy Report 2023,” https://energy.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/energynvgov/content/Home/Features/2023_Status_of_Energy_Report.pdf.
  34. 34. US Energy Information Administration, “Wyoming State Energy Profile,” updated June 20, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=WY.
  35. 35. US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, “Quarterly Solar Industry Update,” August 2024, https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/quarterly-solar-industry-update; US Energy Information Administration, “Florida: Profile Analysis,” 2024, https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=FL#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20Florida%20was%20third,of%20Florida’s%20total%20net%20generation.&text=About%20four%2Dfifths%20of%20the,1%20megawatt%20or%20larger)%20facilities.
  36. 36. Ezra Klein, interview with Jesse Jenkins.
  37. 37. Eric Larson et al., “Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts,” Interim report, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, December 15, 2020, https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/img/Princeton_NZA_Interim_Report_15_Dec_2020_FINAL.pdf, 172.
  38. 38. J. B. Ruhl and James E. Salzman, “The Greens’ Dilemma: Building Tomorrow’s Climate Infrastructure Today,” Emory Law Journal 73, no. 1 (May 2023): 15, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4443474.
  39. 39. US Department of Energy, “Queued Up… but in Need of Transmission,” April 2022, fig. 2, 3, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Queued%20Up%E2%80%A6But%20in%20Need%20of%20Transmission.pdf; Jeff St. John, “Biden’s Got a Plan for Ramping Up Energy Transmission,” Canary Media, May 17, 2023, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/transmission/bidens-got-a-plan-for-ramping-up-energy-transmission.
  40. 40. Joseph H. Eto, “Building Electric Transmission Lines: A Review of Recent Transmission Projects,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Prepared for the Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability and the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis, US Department of Energy, September 2016, LBNL-1006330, https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/building-electric-transmission-lines.
  41. 41. “Rahm Emanuel on the Opportunities of Crisis,” Wall Street Journal (video), November 19, 2008, https://youtu.be/_mzcbXi1Tkk?t=9.
  42. 42. The White House, “Remarks by the President and the Vice President on High-Speed Rail,” April 16, 2009, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-and-vice-president-high-speed-rail.
  43. 43. Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., “Governor Brown Delivers 2018 State of the State Address: ‘California Is Setting the Pace for America,’ ” January 25, 2018, https://archive.gov.ca.gov/archive/gov39/2018/01/25/governor-brown-delivers-2018-state-of-the-state-address-california-is-setting-the-pace-for-america/index.html.
  44. 44. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “Governor Newsom Delivers State of the State Address,” February 12, 2019, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/02/12/state-of-the-state-address/.
  45. 45. “2022 Business Plan, California High-Speed Rail Authority,” February 8, 2022, https://hsr.ca.gov/about/high-speed-rail-business-plans/2022-business-plan/; Ralph Vartabedian, “Costs of California’s Troubled Bullet Train Rise Again, by an Estimated $5 Billion,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-08/california-bullet-train-costs-rise-roughly-5-billion.
  46. 46. Alia Shoaib, “California Train Line Gets a Boost,” Newsweek, May 7, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/california-train-line-boost-1897948.
  47. 47. Library of Congress, “The Westinghouse Air Brake Co.,” n.d., https://www.loc.gov/collections/films-of-westinghouse-works-1904/articles-and-essays/the-westinghouse-world/the-westinghouse-air-brake-co/#:~:text=The%20first%20air%20brake%20invented,forms%20of%20the%20automatic%20brake.
  48. 48. Adam Rogers, “Make America Build Again,” Business Insider, November 16, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/america-build-infrastructure-transportation-housing-regulation-environment-2023-11.
  49. 49. Eight months later, the California High-Speed Rail Authority “approved a contractor to begin designing track and overhead contact systems (OCS) for the initial 171-mile passenger service connecting Merced to Bakersfield,” press release, June 26, 2024, https://hsr.ca.gov/2024/06/26/news-release-california-high-speed-rail-authority-approves-contractor-moves-design-of-track-and-overhead-electrical-systems-forward/.
  50. 50. Here and below, Brian Kelly in conversation with Ezra Klein, October 2023.
  51. 51. Ezra Klein, “ ‘What the Hell Happened to the California of the ’50s and ’60s?,’ ” New York Times, June 18, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/opinion/newsom-california-building-permitting-procurement.html.
  52. 52. Klein, “ ‘What the Hell Happened?’ ”; The White House, “Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Senior Advisor John Podesta on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Priorities for Energy Infrastructure Permitting Reform,” May 10, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/05/10/remarks-as-prepared-for-delivery-by-senior-advisor-john-podesta-on-the-biden-harris-administrations-priorities-for-energy-infrastructure-permitting-reform/.
  53. 53. The White House, “Remarks on a Modern American Industrial Strategy by NEC Director Brian Deese,” April 20, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/04/20/remarks-on-a-modern-american-industrial-strategy-by-nec-director-brian-deese/.
  54. 54. Transit Costs Project, “What the Data Is Telling Us,” under the heading “4. Average Cost/km per Country,” updated February 27, 2024, https://transitcosts.com/new-data/.
  55. 55. Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson, “The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the U.S. Construction Sector,” NBER Working Paper 30845, January 2023, rev. February 2023, http://www.nber.org/papers/w30845.
  56. 56. Ezra Klein, “The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing,” New York Times, February 5, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/economy-construction-productivity-mystery.html.
  57. 57. Klein, “The Story Construction Tells.”
  58. 58. Klein, “The Story Construction Tells.”
  59. 59. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (1982; New Haven, CT: Veritas/Yale University Press, 2022), 3.
  60. 60. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 40.
  61. 61. Klein, “The Story Construction Tells.”
  62. 62. Klein, “The Story Construction Tells.”
  63. 63. Klein, “The Story Construction Tells.”
  64. 64. Leonardo D’Amico et al., “Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation,” December 30, 2023, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4679195 and https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4679195.
  65. 65. D’Amico et al., “Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated?,” 2.
  66. 66. D’Amico et al., “Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated?,” 17.
  67. 67. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 72.
  68. 68. Noah Smith, “Interview: Patrick Collison, Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe,” Noahopinion, March 8, 2021, https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/interview-patrick-collison-co-founder.
  69. 69. “Title I—Motor Vehicle Safety Standards,” 718, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-80/pdf/STATUTE-80-Pg718.pdf; “Title II—Administration and Reporting,” 735, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-80/pdf/STATUTE-80-Pg731.pdf#page=5.
  70. 70. Julius Duscha, “Nader’s Raiders Is Their Name, and Whistle-Blowing Is Their Game…,” New York Times, March 21, 1971, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/03/21/archives/stop-in-the-public-interest-stop-in-the-public-interest.html.
  71. 71. Christian Science Monitor quoted in Anon., “Your Book Review: Public Citizens,” Astral Codex 10 (Substack), June 23, 2023, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-public-citizens; reprinted in “Public Interest Law and the Paradox of Justice by Lawsuit,” Candy for Breakfast (Substack), October 23, 2023, https://www.candyforbreakfast.email/p/public-interest-law-and-the-paradox.
  72. 72. Paul Sabin, Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021), Kindle, xvi–xvii.
  73. 73. Sabin, Public Citizens, Kindle, 100–101.
  74. 74. Environmental Protection Agency, “Progress Cleaning the Air and Improving People’s Health,” updated April 30, 2024, https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning-air-and-improving-peoples-health.
  75. 75. Environmental Protection Agency, “Progress Cleaning the Air and Improving People’s Health,” chart: “Health Effect Reductions (PM2.5 & Ozone Only),” updated April 30, 2024; Natural Resources Defense Council, “The Clean Air Act at 40: A Clear Track Record of Success,” March 2011, https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/cleanairactsuccess.pdf.
  76. 76. “Annual Air Quality, Los Angeles County, Air Quality Days by Year, 1980–2023,” Los Angeles Almanac, https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php.
  77. 77. The authors also thank the writer Max Nussbaum for his analysis of the rise of Nader’s revolution and its legacy.
  78. 78. Jim Lehrer, interview with Ralph Nader, “Newsmaker: Ralph Nader,” PBS News Hour, air date June 30, 2000, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/spc/bb/politics/jan-june00/nader_6-30.html.
  79. 79. Sabin, Public Citizens, Kindle, xvii.
  80. 80. H.R.5—Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, 115th Congress (2017–2018), https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs.
  81. 81. Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish,” Niskanen Center, December 7, 2021, https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-procedure-fetish/. All quotes are from this iteration of the paper.
  82. 82. Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish.”
  83. 83. Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish.”
  84. 84. Robert A. Kagan, Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law, 2d ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), Kindle, 19.
  85. 85. Kagan, Adversarial Legalism, 2d ed., Kindle, 19.
  86. 86. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, ed. Phillips Bradley: the Henry Reeve Text as Revised by Francis Bowen Now Further Corrected and Edited with a Historical Essay, Editorial Notes, and Bibliographies by Bradley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 290 (the page number is to the Vintage Books paperback).
  87. 87. Sean Farhang, “Regulation, Litigation, and Reform,” in Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Sidney M. Milkis, eds. The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 48–76.
  88. 88. Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish.”
  89. 89. Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish.”
  90. 90. Pew Research Center, “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2024,” June 24, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024/.
  91. 91. See Stephen B. Burbank and Sean Farhang, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
  92. 92. J. B. Ruhl and James Salzman, “What Happens When the Green New Deal Meets the Old Green Laws?,” Vermont Law Review 44 (2020): 694, https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1168.
  93. 93. Ruhl and Salzman, “What Happens When the Green New Deal?,” 713.
  94. 94. Ruhl and Salzman, “The Greens’ Dilemma,” 1 and throughout.
  95. 95. Ruhl and Salzman, “The Greens’ Dilemma,” 24–25.
  96. 96. Derek Thompson, interview with Larry Selzer.
  97. 97. Ruhl and Salzman, “The Greens’ Dilemma,” 28.
  98. 98. Zachary D. Liscow, “Getting Infrastructure Built: The Law and Economics of Permitting,” April 2, 2024, 18, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4775481 and http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4775481.
  99. 99. Liscow, “Getting Infrastructure Built,” 16.
  100. 100. Liscow, “Getting Infrastructure Built,” 12, 15.
  101. 101. David Shepardson, “Biden Exempts Some Semiconductor Factories from Environmental Reviews,” Reuters, October 2, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/biden-signs-bill-exempting-some-semiconductor-factories-new-environmental-2024-10-02/.

3. Govern

  1. 1. Heather Knight, “A New S.F. Housing Complex for Homeless People Was Faster, Cheaper to Build. So Why Isn’t It Being Replicated?” San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 2022, https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Here-s-how-to-build-affordable-housing-in-SF-16823736.php.
  2. 2. Nathaniel Decker, “Strategies to Lower Cost and Speed Housing Production: A Case Study of San Francisco’s 833 Bryant Street Project,” Turner Center for Housing Innovation, UC Berkeley, February 2021, 2, https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/833-Bryant-February-2021.pdf.
  3. 3. Senate Bill 35, September 2017, California Legislative Information, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35.
  4. 4. San Francisco Administrative Code Chapter 14B, City and County of San Francisco, effective July 1, 2022, https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/14B%20Rules%20and%20Regulations%20v.2022_0.pdf; Chapter 14B: Local Business Enterprise Utilization and Nondiscrimination in Contracting Ordinance, https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Chapter%2014B%20Local%20Business%20Enterprise%2007%2001%2022.pdf; “Sec. 14B.1. Purpose and Findings” notes that Ordinance No. 139-84 was passed on April 2, 1984.
  5. 5. Proposition 209: Text of Proposed Law, https://vigarchive.sos.ca.gov/1996/general/pamphlet/209text.htm. It went into effect August 28, 1997.
  6. 6. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, “Administrative Code—Local Business Enterprise Program,” October 18, 2021, chart, p. 5, https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0203-21.pdf.
  7. 7. Ezra Klein, “The Problem with Everything-Bagel Liberalism,” New York Times, April 2, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberalism.html.
  8. 8. Tipping Point, “Charles and Helen Schwab Invest $65M in Groundbreaking Homelessness Solutions in SF,” October 21, 2020, https://tippingpoint.org/press/press-releases/charles-and-helen-schwab-invest-65m-in-groundbreaking-homelessness-solutions-in-sf/; Maria Di Mento, “Billionaire Charles Schwab Gives $65 Million to House the Homeless,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, October 26, 2020, https://www.philanthropy.com/article/billionaire-charles-schwab-gives-65-million-to-house-the-homeless; J. K. Dineen, “Schwabs Donate $65 Million to Build Housing for Homeless in S.F.,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2020, https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Schwabs-donate-65-million-to-build-housing-for-15665785.php.
  9. 9. Krutika Amin, Imani Telesford, Rakesh Singh, and Cynthia Cox, “How Do Prices of Drugs for Weight Loss in the U.S. Compare to Peer Nations’ Prices?,” Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, August 17, 2023, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/prices-of-drugs-for-weight-loss-in-the-us-and-peer-nations/.
  10. 10. City of Houston, Texas, Planning and Development, Development Regulations, 2024, https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/#:~:text=The%20City%20of%20Houston%20does,how%20property%20can%20be%20subdivided.
  11. 11. Point2, “Residential Construction Trends,” https://www.point2homes.com/news/residential-construction-data; New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits, December 2023, February 7, 2024, https://www.nj.gov/dca/codes/reporter/2023monthly/HOUSE_12_2023.pdf; New York City, Department of City Planning, press release, April 25, 2024, https://www.nyc.gov/site/planning/about/press-releases/pr-20240425.page#:~:text=27%2C980%20new%20homes%20were%20constructed,has%20depressed%20new%20housing%20development.; US Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey, https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/current.html. See also M. Nolan Gray, “A Bold Case Against Zoning,” Fast Company, July 11, 2022, https://www.fastcompany.com/90766731/a-bold-case-against-zoning.
  12. 12. California YIMBY, Ned Resnikoff, director, “Housing Abundance as a Condition for Ending Homelessness: Lessons from Houston, Texas,” California YIMBY Education Fund, n.d., https://cayimby.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Housing-Abundance-as-a-Condition-for-Ending-Homelessness-FINAL.pdf.
  13. 13. Roy Kent, “Is Buying a Home Easier or Harder in Houston? Here’s How It Compares to Other Texas Metros,” Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, December 13, 2023, https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/home-buying-Houston-Texas-affordability; Maurice Backman, “Houston Housing Market Forecast,” U.S. News & World Report, March 20, 2023, https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/housing-market-index/articles/houston-housing-market-forecast.
  14. 14. “San Francisco Housing Policy and Practice Review 2023,” California Department of Housing and Community Development, https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/policy-and-research/plan-report/sf-housing-policy-and-practice-review.pdf.
  15. 15. Ezra Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve Homelessness Is ‘Absolutely Insane,’ ” New York Times, October 23, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/opinion/los-angeles-homelessness-affordable-housing.html.
  16. 16. Los Angeles Housing Department, “City of Los Angeles Prop HHH Progress Report,” tracks the figures. By September 2024, 5,327 units had been built: https://housing2.lacity.org/housing/hhh-progress-dashboard. Also see City of Los Angeles Inter-Governmental Correspondence, June 2024, with charts, https://cao.lacity.gov/Homeless/PropHHHAOC-20240627c.pdf; Los Angeles Housing Department, “Supportive Housing Update,” https://housing2.lacity.org/hhh-progress.
  17. 17. Los Angeles Housing Department, “City of Los Angeles Prop HHH Progress Report.”
  18. 18. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve.”
  19. 19. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve.”
  20. 20. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve.”
  21. 21. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve,” and communication from Tong.
  22. 22. Eric Owen Moss, Venice Dell Community, https://ericowenmoss.com/project-detail/reese-davidson-community-housing/; Steven Sharp, “Eric Owen Moss–Designed Supportive Housing Gains Approval in Venice,” Urbanize Network, June 1, 2021, https://la.urbanize.city/post/venice-eric-owen-moss-reese-davidson-approval; Trevor Bach, “ ‘Grandfather Would Be Appalled’: Family Member Wants Name Off Venice Homeless Housing,” The Real Deal, November 8, 2021, https://therealdeal.com/la/2021/11/08/grandfather-would-be-appalled-family-member-wants-name-off-venice-homeless-housing/.
  23. 23. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve.”
  24. 24. Ezra Klein, interview with Heidi Marston.
  25. 25. Klein, “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve.”
  26. 26. Michael B. Gerrard, “A Time for Triage,” The Environmental Forum 38 (2022): 40, https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4885&context=faculty_scholarship.
  27. 27. Klein, “The Problem with Everything-Bagel Liberalism.”
  28. 28. Semiconductor Industry Association, “Turning the Tide for Semiconductor Manufacturing in the U.S.,” SIA Summary of Boston Consulting Group Report, volume 4, October 1, 2020, https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/SIA-SUMMARY-OF-BCG-REPORT.pdf.
  29. 29. Semiconductor Industry Association, “Study Finds Federal Incentives for Domestic Semiconductor Manufacturing Would Strengthen America’s Chip Production, Economy, National Security, Supply Chains,” press release, September 16, 2020, https://www.semiconductors.org/study-finds-federal-incentives-for-domestic-semiconductor-manufacturing-would-strengthen-americas-chip-production-economy-national-security-supply-chains/.
  30. 30. Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), CHIPS Incentives Program—Commercial Fabrication Facilities, 2023, https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2024/04/19/Amended%20CHIPS-Commercial%20Fabrication%20Facilities%20NOFO%20Amendment.pdf.
  31. 31. Klein, “The Problem with Everything-Bagel Liberalism.”
  32. 32. California High-Speed Rail Authority, “Central Valley,” n.d., https://hsr.ca.gov/high-speed-rail-in-california/central-valley/.
  33. 33. John J. DiIulio Jr., Bring Back the Bureaucrats: Why More Federal Workers Will Lead to Better (and Smaller!) Government (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2014), Kindle, loc. 231 and loc. 1460.
  34. 34. Ralph Vartabedian, “How California’s Faltering High-Speed Rail Project Was ‘Captured’ by Costly Consultants,” Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html.
  35. 35. Ezra Klein, interview with Brian Kelly.
  36. 36. BART, “Best Scoring Bid to Build BART’s Fleet of the Future,” April 23, 2012, https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2012/news20120423.
  37. 37. Darwin BondGraham and Jose Fermoso, “BART Says It’s Saving $394M on New Train Cars,” The Oaklandside, January 10, 2024, https://oaklandside.org/2024/01/10/bart-saving-millions-new-train-cars-fleet-of-the-future/.
  38. 38. Bob Lettenberger, “BART New Car Fleet Under Budget,” Trains, January 17, 2024, https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/bart-new-car-fleet-under-budget/.
  39. 39. Zachary D. Liscow, “Getting Infrastructure Built: The Law and Economics of Permitting,” 22.
  40. 40. “Report: EDD Delayed, Denied Benefits to Millions During Pandemic; Quick Response Not a Priority,” CBS News, August 8, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/report-edd-delayed-denied-benefits-to-millions-during-pandemic-quick-response-not-a-priority/.
  41. 41. Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2023), Kindle, 25, 26.
  42. 42. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 28.
  43. 43. Yolanda Richardson and Jennifer Pahlka, “Employment Development Department Strike Team Detailed Assessment and Recommendations,” September 16, 2020, https://www.govops.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2020/09/Assessment.pdf.
  44. 44. Michael Krigsman, “California Abandons $2 Billion Court Management System,” ZDNET, April 1, 2012, https://www.zdnet.com/article/california-abandons-2-billion-court-management-system/; Maura Dolan, “Cutbacks in California Court System Produce Long Lines, Short Tempers,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2014, https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-court-cuts-20140511-story.html.
  45. 45. Office of the Inspector General, US Department of State, “Review of the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ [CA] ConsularOne Modernization Program—Significant Deployment Delays Continue,” November 2021, https://www.stateoig.gov/uploads/report/report_pdf_file/isp-i-22-03_7.pdf; Tom Temin, “This State Department IT Project Started in 2009 and It’s Nowhere Near Finished,” Federal News Network, January 3, 2022, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2022/01/this-state-department-it-project-started-in-2009-and-its-nowhere-near-finished/.
  46. 46. US Government Accountability Office, “IRS’s Efforts to Modernize 60-Year-Old Tax Processing System Is Almost a Decade Away,” November 4, 2021, https://www.gao.gov/blog/irss-efforts-modernize-60-year-old-tax-processing-system-almost-decade-away; Tax Policy Center, “What Technology Does the IRS Use?,” updated January 2024, https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-technology-does-irs-use.
  47. 47. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 34–35.
  48. 48. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 58.
  49. 49. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 69–70.
  50. 50. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 68.
  51. 51. Pahlka, Recoding America, Kindle, 50.
  52. 52. Ezra Klein, interview with Mike Carroll. All further quotes are from this source.
  53. 53. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Proclamation of Disaster Emergency, June 12, 2023, https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/governor/documents/2023.6.12-Disaster-Emergency-Proclamation-I-95-PDF.pdf.
  54. 54. United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers, July 5, 2023, https://unionroofers.com/philadelphia-building-trades-work-24-7-to-rebuild-i-95-collapse/.
  55. 55. Gregory Korte, Mark Niquette, and Skylar Woodhouse, “How the I-95 Bridge Reopened Just 12 Days After Fiery Collapse,” Bloomberg, June 28, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-28/resurrection-of-i-95-in-just-two-weeks-is-dubbed-small-miracle; Heavy Construction Systems Specialists, “Getting a City Back to Work When Every Minute Counts,” September 2023, blog post, https://www.hcss.com/blog/construction-of-i-95-bridge-after-collapse/.
  56. 56. Julia Terrero, “From TikToks to a 24/7 Live Stream, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s I-95 Response Grows His National Profile,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 17, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-governor-response-i95-repairs-national-profile-20230616.html.
  57. 57. Josh Shapiro, “We Fixed I-95 in 12 Days. Here Are Our Lessons for U.S. Infrastructure,” Washington Post, July 16, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/17/interstate-95-repair-infrastructure-shapiro-pennsylvania/.
  58. 58. Brink Lindsey, “State Capacity: What Is It, How We Lost It, and How to Get It Back,” Niskanen Center, November 2021, p. 8, https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/brinkpaper.pdf.

4. Invent

  1. 1. Katalin Karikó, with Ali Benjamin, Breaking Through: My Life in Science (New York: Crown, 2023), Kindle, 4, 8.
  2. 2. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 10.
  3. 3. Biological Research Center, Szeged, SZTE Klebelsberg Library Gallery and Media Gallery, https://mediateka.ek.szte.hu/exhibits/show/katalin_kariko_eng/brc_szeged; and https://www.brc.hu/en.
  4. 4. Derek Thompson, interview with Katalin Karikó.
  5. 5. Derek Thompson, interview with Katalin Karikó.
  6. 6. Chiara Franzoni, Paula Stephan, and Reinhilde Veugelers, “Funding Risky Research,” NBER Working Paper 28905, June 2021, 4–5, http://www.nber.org/papers/w28905 and https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28905/w28905.pdf.
  7. 7. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 178. A variation on “Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments,” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Jean Paul Richter, vol. 1, 1888, Project Gutenberg, https://archive.org/stream/thenotebooksofle05000gut/7ldvc09.txt; and “Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments,” The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Arranged, Rendered into English and Introduced by Edward MacCurd (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 64.
  8. 8. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 183.
  9. 9. Andy Markowitz and Jenny Rough, “List of Coronavirus-Related Restrictions in Every State,” March 17, 2020, updated May 1, 2024, https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-2020/coronavirus-state-restrictions.html; Victor Fiorillo, “Yes, Even Your Outdoor Socially Distanced Thanksgiving Party Is Banned,” Philadelphia, November 17, 2020, https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/11/17/outdoor-thanksgiving-philadelphia-covid/; Gabrielle Connor, Vaishnavi Vaidya, Jennifer Kolker, and Ran Li, “Indoor Dining and COVID-19: Implications for Reopening in 30 U.S. Cities,” Urban Health Collaborative, Drexel University, September 2020, https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/uhc/Additional%20Project%20Documents/IndoorDiningCOVID19.ashx?la=en; “State Alcohol-Related Laws During the COVID-19 Emergency for On-Premise and Off-Premise Establishments as of June 15, 2020,” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health, June 15, 2020, https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/sites/default/files/file-page/apis_-_covid-19_memo_6.15.20_508c.pdf.
  10. 10. Jason Abaluck et al., “The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh,” August 31, 2021, https://poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf.
  11. 11. So, did mask mandates work, or didn’t they? The frustrating answer is it depends. Jason Abaluck, a Yale professor who helped run the Bangladesh study, offered a sobering synthesis. The success of mask mandates—like the success of most behavioral interventions—hinges on many factors, including public trust in government, civilian adherence to the mask rules, and state capacity to enforce them. In places where a well-informed and motivated public conscientiously wore high-quality masks almost all the time, mask mandates probably worked, he said. “But if Alabama tomorrow mandated mask-wearing, it would do nothing.” Derek Thompson, interview with Jason Abaluck.
  12. 12. Sandy Cohen, “The Fastest Vaccine in History,” December 10, 2020, UCLA Health, https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/the-fastest-vaccine-in-history; Maya Prabhu, “Mumps: The Story of the Second Fastest Vaccine Ever Developed,” VaccinesWork/Gavi, April 22, 2022, https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mumps-story-second-fastest-vaccine-ever-developed.
  13. 13. Colin Dwyer, “Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Becomes 2nd to Earn FDA Authorization,” NPR, December 18, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/18/947948227/modernas-covid-19-vaccine-becomes-2nd-to-earn-fda-authorization; “Moderna Announces FDA Authorization of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in U.S.,” Moderna, press release, December 18, 2020, https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2020/Moderna-Announces-FDA-Authorization-of-Moderna-COVID-19-Vaccine-in-U.S/default.aspx.
  14. 14. Sarah Zhang, “The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried,” Atlantic, February 14, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/vaccinate-old/622080/.
  15. 15. Emily Head and Dr. Sabine L. van Elsland, “Vaccinations May Have Prevented Almost 20 Million COVID-19 Deaths Worldwide,” Imperial College London, June 24, 2022, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/237591/vaccinations-have-prevented-almost-20-million/.
  16. 16. Ezra Klein, “The Economic Mistake the Left Is Finally Confronting,” New York Times, September 19, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-progressivism.html.
  17. 17. Steven Overly, “This Government Loan Program Helped Tesla at a Critical Time. Trump Wants to Cut It,” Washington Post, March 16, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/03/16/this-government-loan-program-helped-tesla-at-a-critical-time-trump-wants-to-cut-it/; US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, “Tesla,” https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla; Maddow Blog and Steve Benen, “Tesla Repaying Obama Admin Loan 5 Years Early,” NBC News, March 12, 2013, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/tesla-repaying-obama-admin-loan-5-years-early-flna1c8823565.
  18. 18. Andrew J. Fieldhouse and Karel Mertens, “Government-Funded R&D Produces Long-Term Productivity Gains,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, February 13, 2024, https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2024/0213.
  19. 19. Derek Thompson, interview with Heidi Williams.
  20. 20. Meagan C. Fitzpatrick, Seyed M. Moghadas, Abhishek Pandey, and Alison P. Galvani, “Two Years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of Hospitalizations and Deaths,” The Commonwealth Fund (blog), December 13, 2022, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations.
  21. 21. Derek Thompson, interview with Katalin Karikó; Ting Yu, “How Scientists Drew Weissman (MED’87, GRS’87) and Katalin Karikó Developed the Revolutionary mRNA Technology Inside COVID Vaccines,” Bostonia, November 18, 2021, https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/how-drew-weissman-and-katalin-kariko-developed-mrna-technology-inside-covid-vaccines/.
  22. 22. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 223.
  23. 23. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 227.
  24. 24. Gina Kolata, “Long Overlooked, Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World from the Coronavirus,” New York Times, April 8, 2021, updated October 2, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-kariko.html.
  25. 25. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 262.
  26. 26. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 263.
  27. 27. Derek Thompson, interview with Katalin Karikó.
  28. 28. Derek Thompson, “How mRNA Technology Could Change the World,” Atlantic, March 29, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-mrna-technology-could-change-world/618431/.
  29. 29. John Holder, “Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World,” New York Times, updated March 13, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html; Pfizer, map of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine shipments, n.d., https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/working-to-reach-everyone-everywhere; Moderna, “U.S. Government Purchases Additional 100 Million Doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine,” February 11, 2021, https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2021/U.S.-Government-Purchases-Additional-100-Million-Doses-of-Modernas-COVID-19-Vaccine/default.aspx.
  30. 30. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 195.
  31. 31. Derek Thompson, interview with Katalin Karikó.
  32. 32. Richard Harris, “Scientists Win Nobel for Work on How Cells Communicate,” NPR, October 7, 2013, https://www.npr.org/2013/10/07/230192033/scientists-win-nobel-for-work-on-how-cells-communicate.
  33. 33. Derek Thompson, interview with Pierre Azoulay.
  34. 34. Thomas D. Snyder, ed., “120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait,” US Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Center for Education Statistics, January 1993, p. 75, table 23, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf.
  35. 35. According to IES/National Center for Education Statistics, “Between fall 2011 and fall 2022, the total annual number of faculty at degree-granting postsecondary institutions ranged from 1.5 to 1.6 million. There were 1.5 million faculty in both 2011 and 2022, with a peak at 1.6 million in 2015,” https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61#fn1.
  36. 36. Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb, “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?,” American Economic Review 110, no. 4 (2020): 1104–144, https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf and https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180338.
  37. 37. Derek Thompson, interview with Nicholas Bloom. Medical research productivity is hard to measure, and Bloom’s conclusions are not universally supported. Some scholars have published persuasive work suggesting that medical research productivity is more likely stable. See “Distilling Data from Large Language Models,” by Maya M. Durvasula, Sabri Eyuboglu, and David M. Ritzwoller. But whether productivity in this all-important sector is flat or declining, the most important thing is that it is not obviously rising. Just as we should hope for rising productivity in any industry, we should hope for it in science.
  38. 38. Andrew von Eschenbach, “NCI Sets Goal of Eliminating Suffering and Death Due to Cancer by 2015,” Journal of the National Medical Association 95, no. 7 (July 2003): 637–39, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2594648/?page=1.
  39. 39. The White House, “Remarks of President Barack Obama—Address to Joint Session of Congress,” February 24, 2009, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-address-joint-session-congress.
  40. 40. The White House, “President Biden Reignites Cancer Moonshot to End Cancer as We Know It,” February 2, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/02/fact-sheet-president-biden-reignites-cancer-moonshot-to-end-cancer-as-we-know-it/.
  41. 41. Some research finds that the age-adjusted cancer mortality rate has declined meaningfully in the last few decades. This is welcome news, but it is not quite right to associate this entire decline with medical breakthroughs. For example, despite some advancements in the treatment of late-stage lung cancers, the rate of lung cancer has declined in the last few decades mostly because of the long-term decline of smoking in the United States.
  42. 42. Derek Thompson, interview with Eric Topol.
  43. 43. Benjamin F. Jones, “The Burden of Knowledge and the ‘Death of the Renaissance Man’: Is Innovation Getting Harder?,” April 2008, https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/burdenofknowledge.pdf.
  44. 44. Periodic Table, Phosphorus, “History,” https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/15/phosphorus.
  45. 45. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “Big Science: The Discovery of Tennessine,” January 27, 2017, https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/Ts_Program%20Final%20sm.pdf; Periodic Table, Tennessine, Element Summary, 3. History, National Institutes of Health, https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/element/Tennessine#section=Estimated-Oceanic-Abundance; Scott Alexander, “Is Science Slowing Down?,” Slate Star Codex (blog), November 26, 2018, https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/26/is-science-slowing-down-2/.
  46. 46. Gregor Mendel, “Versuche über Plflanzenhybriden,” Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn 5 (1865): 3–47. Presented orally at the February 8 and March 8, 1865, meetings of the Brünn Natural History Society. Published in 1866, Brünn, Czechoslovakia, by Verlag des Vereines. Biodiversity Heritage Library, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/124139#page/5/mode/1up. Published in English in 1901: “Experiments in Plant Hybridization,” trans. William Bateson, http://www.esp.org/foundations/genetics/classical/gm-65.pdf.
  47. 47. Derek Thompson, interview with Heidi Williams.
  48. 48. Derek Thompson, interview with Jeremy Neufeld.
  49. 49. Shai Bernstein, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada, “The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States,” NBER Working Paper 30797, December 2022, DOI 10.3386/w30797, summary here: https://www.nber.org/digest/20233/outsize-role-immigrants-us-innovation; Katia Savchuk, “A New Look at Immigrants’ Outsize Contribution to Innovation in the US,” Stanford University, Institute for Economic Policy Research, April 14, 2023, https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/new-look-immigrants-outsize-contribution-innovation-us; Stuart Anderson, “Immigrants Keep Winning Nobel Prizes,” Forbes, October 7, 2021, updated April 21, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/10/07/immigrants-keep-winning-nobel-prizes/.
  50. 50. Derek Thompson, interview with Jeremy Neufeld.
  51. 51. American Immigration Council, “The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy,” October 8, 2024, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet; US Citizenship and Immigration Services, “USCIS Reaches Fiscal Year 2024 H-1B Cap,” December 13, 2023, https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-reaches-fiscal-year-2024-h-1b-cap.
  52. 52. The H-1B visa program is politically controversial, even among those who claim to support high-skilled immigration. One common criticism is that these foreign-born workers take jobs from Americans for less pay. The fear may be overstated. Several studies (see William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln, “The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and US Ethnic Invention,” 2010, and John Bound, Nicolas Morales, and Gaurav Kahnna, “Understanding the Impact of H-1B Visas on the U.S. Economy,” 2017) have found that increases in H-1B admissions are associated with more patents and higher growth at firms, while the effect on native-born employment is not significantly negative.
  53. 53. Derek Thompson, interview with Jeremy Neufeld.
  54. 54. Sally Rockey, “More Data on Age and the Workforce,” National Institutes of Health Office of Extramural Research, March 25, 2015, https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2015/03/25/age-of-investigator/.
  55. 55. Michael Park, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk, “Papers and Patents Are Becoming Less Disruptive Over Time, Nature 613 (2023): 138–44, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x.
  56. 56. Derek Thompson, interview with James Evans.
  57. 57. Derek Thompson, interview with Pierre Azoulay.
  58. 58. Gregory A. Petsko, “Goodbye, Columbus,” Genome Biology 13 (2012): Article no. 155, https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2012-13-5-155.
  59. 59. Sources differ on the date of the White House meeting. See Robert Reinhold, “Dr. Vannevar Bush Is Dead at 84,” New York Times, June 30, 1974, https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/30/archives/dr-vannevar-bush-is-dead-at-84-dr-vannevar-bush-who-marshaled.html; photocopy of June 15, 1940, letter to Vannevar Bush from Roosevelt, creating the NDRC, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/atomic/atomic_02.pdf; Internet Pioneers, “Vannevar Bush,” https://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html; “Vannevar Bush: The Memex,” Lemelson–MIT Program, https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/vannevar-bush; Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 153–55; Bush to Seitz, September 16, 1968 (NAS Archives). Per draft notes for Bush’s “Science, the Endless Frontier”: “Summoned by President Roosevelt, in the spring of 1940, the President of the National Academy and others associated with him recommended the creation of a single central agency within the executive establishment… for the purpose of mobilizing… scientific personnel and the facilities of the nation”: “Frank Baldwin Jewett (1939–1947),” in The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years 1863–1963, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK217891/.
  60. 60. Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier, A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1945), 17, 75th anniversary edition (here and elsewhere, we refer to the report in its published book form; page numbers are from this searchable edition): https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/EndlessFrontier_w.pdf.
  61. 61. Eva Åhrén, “Joseph Kinyoun, the Hygienic Laboratory, and the Origins of the NIH,” NIH Catalyst 20, no. 6 (November–December 2012), National Institutes of Health, https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/20/6/nih-in-history.
  62. 62. Bhaven N. Sampat, “Doubling Down: Will Large Increases in the NIH Budget Promote More Meaningful Medical Innovation?,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 51, S2 (2023): 21–23, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10911986/.
  63. 63. Matt Faherty, “New Science’s Report on the NIH,” New Science, April 2022, https://newscience.org/nih/#how-are-indirect-cost-rates-calculated.
  64. 64. “Cassius James Van Slyke, M.D.,” NIH Almanac, National Institutes of Health, https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/cassius-james-van-slyke-md.
  65. 65. Cassius Van Slyke, “New Horizons in Medical Research,” Science 104, no. 2711 (December 1946): 559–67, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17772322/.
  66. 66. “James A. Shannon, M.D.,” NIH Almanac, National Institutes of Health, https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/james-shannon-md.
  67. 67. James A. Shannon and Charles V. Kidd, “Medical Research in Perspective,” Science (New Series) 124, no. 3233 (December 1956): 1185–190, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1752817.
  68. 68. Bhaven N. Sampat, “The History and Political Economy of NIH Peer Review,” Brookings Institution and the Institute for Progress, May 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SampatFinal-3.pdf.
  69. 69. “Proxmire, William. Golden Fleece Awards, 1975–1987,” press release, March 11, 1975, Wisconsin Historical Society, https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/proxmire/id/84/; Etienne S. Benson, “All That’s Gold Does Not Glitter,” Association for Psychological Science, June 1, 2006, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/all-thats-gold-does-not-glitter.
  70. 70. Sampat, “The History and Political Economy of NIH Peer Review,” 16.
  71. 71. Sampat, “The History and Political Economy of NIH Peer Review,” 16; Philip H. Abelson, “More Paper Work, Less Research,” Science 139, no. 3556 (February 22, 1963), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.139.3556.725.
  72. 72. The Editors, “Dr. No Money: The Broken Science Funding System,” Scientific American, May 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dr-no-money/.
  73. 73. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, “Timeline for Assignment, Review, and Council,” n.d., https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/timelines-assignment-review.
  74. 74. “John Doench, Ph.D.,” Broad Institute, October 2023, https://www.broadinstitute.org/bios/john-doench.
  75. 75. Derek Thompson, interview with John Doench.
  76. 76. Karikó, Breaking Through, Kindle, 183.
  77. 77. As Azoulay and Danielle Li note in “Scientific Grant Funding,” NBER Working Paper 26889, June 2021, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26889/w26889.pdf), the term originated with Lawrence: Peter A. Lawrence, “Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research,” PLoS Biology 7, no. 9 (2009): e1000197, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197.
  78. 78. Derek Thompson, interview with Pierre Azoulay.
  79. 79. Derek Thompson, interview with Pierre Azoulay.
  80. 80. Kevin J. Boudreau, Eva C. Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani, and Christoph Riedl, “The Novelty Paradox & Bias for Normal Science: Evidence from Randomized Medical Grant Proposal Evaluations,” Harvard Business School Working Paper 13–053, December 2012, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10001229/13-053.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
  81. 81. Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen, “Stagnation and Scientific Incentives,” NBER Working Paper 26752, February 2020, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26752/w26752.pdf.
  82. 82. Mikko Packalen and Jay Bhattacharya, “NIH Funding and the Pursuit of Edge Science,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 22 (May 2020): 12011–016, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1910160117.
  83. 83. Derek Thompson, interview with James Evans.
  84. 84. Adam M. Deane, Marianne J. Chapman, and Michael Horowitz, “The Therapeutic Potential of a Venomous Lizard: The Use of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Analogues in the Critically Ill,” Critical Care 14, no. 5 (2010): 1004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219279/.
  85. 85. Marybeth Shea, “Discovering Life in Yellowstone Where Nobody Thought It Could Exist,” National Park Service, n.d., https://www.nps.gov/articles/thermophile-yell.htm.
  86. 86. Yoshizumi Ishino et al., “Nucleotide Sequence of the IAP Gene, Responsible for Alkaline Phosphatase Isoenzyme Conversion in Escherichia coli, and Identification of the Gene Product,” Journal of Bacteriology 169 (1987): 5429–433, doi: 10.1128/jb.169.12.5429-5433.1987; Francisco J. M. Mojica, G. Juez, and F. Rodríguez-Valera, “Transcription at Different Salinities of Haloferax mediterranei Sequences Adjacent to Partially Modified PstI Sites,” Molecular Microbiology 9 (1993): 613–21, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1993.tb01721.x.
  87. 87. Derek Thompson, interview with James Evans.
  88. 88. Email from Francis Collins to Peter Thiel, January 12, 2017, https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7203720/NIH-Thiel-Communications.pdf.
  89. 89. “NIH Director’s Pioneer Award” and “NIH Director’s New Innovator Award,” Office of Strategic Coordination—The Common Fund, National Institutes of Health, 2024, https://commonfund.nih.gov/pioneer.
  90. 90. Derek Thompson, interview with Patricia Labosky.
  91. 91. James M. Anderson, “Evaluation of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program-DP1,” Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, National Institutes of Health, May 14, 2013, https://dpcpsi.nih.gov/sites/default/files/CoC-051413-Pioneer-Award-Program-DP1.pdf.
  92. 92. Moderna, “DARPA Awards Moderna Therapeutics a Grant for Up to $25 Million to Develop Messenger RNA Therapeutics,” press release, October 2, 2013, https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2013/DARPA-Awards-Moderna-Therapeutics-a-Grant-for-up-to-25-Million-to-Develop-Messenger-RNA-Therapeutics/default.aspx.
  93. 93. In fact, DARPA has inspired several offshoots, including ARPA-E and ARPA-H, for high-risk research in energy and health, respectively.
  94. 94. Office of Space Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce, https://www.space.commerce.gov/links/resources-for-space-entrepreneurs/opportunities-department-of-defense-national-security-agencies/#:~:text=Defense%20Advanced%20Research%20Projects%20Agency%20(DARPA)&text=Its%20mission%20is%20to%20make,have%20a%20dedicated%20space%20division.
  95. 95. Derek Thompson, interview with Erica R. H. Fuchs. All subsequent Fuchs quotes are from this interview.
  96. 96. Fuchs promised not to reveal the identity of the manager, given the sensitivity of his military work.
  97. 97. Don Clark, “IBM Reports Advance in Shrinking Chip Circuitry,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-reports-advances-in-shrinking-future-chips-1436414814.
  98. 98. Derek Thompson, interview with Jon Gertner.
  99. 99. Derek Thompson, interview with Jon Gertner.
  100. 100. Derek Thompson, interview with Jon Gertner.
  101. 101. Derek Thompson, interview with Heidi Williams.
  102. 102. “Metascience,” Institute for Progress, https://ifp.org/category/metascience/.
  103. 103. Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin, and Gustavo Manso, “Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences,” NBER Working Paper 15466, October 2009, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15466/w15466.pdf.
  104. 104. Matt Clancy et al., “To Speed Up Scientific Progress, We Need to Understand Science Policy,” Metascience, September 11, 2023, https://ifp.org/to-speed-up-scientific-progress-we-need-to-understand-science-policy/.
  105. 105. Derek Thompson, interview with Pierre Azoulay.

5. Deploy

  1. 1. James Phinney Baxter III, Scientists Against Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968 [and previous publishers]), Kindle, 517.
  2. 2. Alexander Fleming, “On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzæ,” British Journal of Experimental Pathology 10, no. 3 (1929): 226–36, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2048009/?page=1. Fleming called it Penicillium rubrum in his landmark 1929 paper. It was subsequently identified as Penicillium notatum and Penicillium chrysogenum. Today it is recognized as Penicillium rubens: Jos Houbraken, Jens C. Frisvad, and Robert A. Samson, “Fleming’s Penicillin Producing Strain Is Not Penicillium chrysogenum but P. rubens,” IMA Fungus 2, no. 1 (June 2011): 87–95, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3317369/.
  3. 3. Baxter, Scientists Against Time, Kindle, loc. 6605–621. Also see E. Chain and H. W. Florey et al., “Penillin as a Chemotherapeutic Agent,” Lancet, August 24, 1940, 226–28, Experiment 2, 227, file://C:/Users/User/Downloads/19400824_florey_penicillinasachemotherapeuticagent_lancet.pdf. The original sample size was eight mice only. See Eric Lax, The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015), Kindle, loc. 1940. Increasingly, over time, Florey and Chain used more mice, building up to Experiment 2—with its division into three groups of mice given three different bacteria, https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-S0140673601087281/first-page-pdf.
  4. 4. Baxter, Scientists Against Time, Kindle, loc. 704.
  5. 5. Derek Thompson, “Thomas Edison’s Greatest Invention,” Atlantic, November 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/edmund-morris-edison/598357/.
  6. 6. Derek Thompson, “Why the Age of American Progress Ended,” Atlantic, December 12, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/science-technology-vaccine-invention-history/672227/.
  7. 7. Brink Lindsey, “Eli Dourado on Abundance and Collapse,” a conversation with Dourado, The Permanent Problem (Substack), July 16, 2024, https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/eli-dourado-on-abundance-and-collapse.
  8. 8. Robinson Meyer, “Why America Doesn’t Really Make Solar Panels Anymore,” Atlantic, June 15, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/why-the-us-doesnt-really-make-solar-panels-anymore-industrial-policy/619213/.
  9. 9. “Our History: A Story of Innovation and Progress,” Otis, https://www.otis.com/en/us/our-company/history.
  10. 10. Stephen Jacob Smith, “The American Elevator Explains Why Housing Costs Have Skyrocketed,” New York Times, July 8, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/elevator-construction-regulation-labor-immigration.html.
  11. 11. David E. Sanger, “China Has Leapfrogged the U.S. in Key Technologies. Can a New Law Help?,” New York Times, July 28, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/politics/us-china-semiconductors.html.
  12. 12. Shoya Okinaga, “Japan Battery Material Producers Lose Spark as China Races Ahead,” Nikkei Asia, April 4, 2022, https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Materials/Japan-battery-material-producers-lose-spark-as-China-races-ahead2#_blank.
  13. 13. Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier. For the Committee on Medical Research, see 58–59 and elsewhere throughout; for malaria, see 53, https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/EndlessFrontier_w.pdf.
  14. 14. Baxter, Scientists Against Time, Kindle, 528, and see 522–27.
  15. 15. Baxter, Scientists Against Time, Kindle, 530–32.
  16. 16. Christen Rayner, “How the Discovery of Penicillin Has Influenced Modern Medicine,” Oxford Scientist, June 1, 2020, https://oxsci.org/how-penicillin-has-influenced-modern-medicine/.
  17. 17. Derek Thompson, “Why the Age of American Progress Ended,” Atlantic, December 12, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/science-technology-vaccine-invention-history/672227/.
  18. 18. “Alessandro Volta,” American Physical Society, n.d., https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/201012/physicshistory.cfm.
  19. 19. “December 20, 1900: Nature Reports on William Duddell’s ‘Musical Arcs,’ ” American Physical Society, n.d., https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/201012/physicshistory.cfm.
  20. 20. “The Incandescent Lamp Patent,” (The Consolidated Electric Light Company, Appellant, v. The McKeesport Light Company), 159 U.S. 465 (1895), Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Pennsylvania, No. 10, argued October 29, 30, 1894; decided November 11, 1815, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep159/usrep159465/usrep159465.pdf, 476–477.
  21. 21. “Vast Power of the Sun Is Tapped by Battery Using Sand Ingredient,” New York Times, April 26, 1954, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/04/26/issue.html.
  22. 22. “About Explorer 1,” NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, n.d., https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1958-002B.
  23. 23. “Vanguard 1,” NASA, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1958-002B.
  24. 24. “Every NASA Budget Request, from 1961 to Now,” The Planetary Society, https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/every-nasa-budget-request.
  25. 25. Alice Buck, US Department of Energy, “A History of the Energy Research and Development Administration,” March 1982, https://www.energy.gov/management/articles/history-energy-research-and-development-administration.
  26. 26. Robert SanGeorge, “Focus ’83: Energy Department Has New Secretary and a Fresh Lease on Life for 1983,” United Press International, December 16, 1982, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/12/16/Focus-83-Energy-Department-has-new-secretary-amd-a-fresh-lease-on-life-for-1983/8180408862800/.
  27. 27. The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, episode 7171, “Reagan’s Solar Policy,” July 7, 1981, American Archive of Public Broadcasting, https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-8c9r20sj5v; Gregory F. Nemet, How Solar Energy Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation (London: Routledge, 2019), Kindle, 71.
  28. 28. Email from Gregory Nemet to Derek Thompson.
  29. 29. Matt Hourihan and David Parkes, American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Federal R&D Budget Trends: A Short Summary,” January 2019, p. 6, fig. 8, https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2019-01/AAAS%20RD%20Primer%202019_2.pdf; Nat Bullard, @NatBullard, tweet, March 26, 2023, 12:37 p.m., https://x.com/NatBullard/status/1640060360181817344.
  30. 30. Matthew L. Wald, “U.S. Use of Renewable Energy Took a Big Fall in 2001,” New York Times, December 8, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/us/us-use-of-renewable-energy-took-a-big-fall-in-2001.html. Also see US Energy Information Administration, “Renewables Share of U.S. Energy Consumption Highest Since 1930s,” May 28, 2015, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=21412.
  31. 31. “Sunspots: Germany Proves Solar Energy Is No Mirage,” Knowledge at Wharton, May 30, 2012, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/sunspots-germany-proves-solar-energy-is-no-mirage/.
  32. 32. Joern Hoppmann, Joern Huenteler, and Bastien Girod, “Compulsive Policy-Making—the Evolution of the German Feed-In Tariff System for Solar Photovoltaic Power,” Research Policy 43 (2014): 1422–1441, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jhuenteler/files/rp_germany_pv.pdf; see p. 1426, table 2.
  33. 33. Derek Thompson, email interview with Gregory Nemet.
  34. 34. Nemet, How Solar Energy Became Cheap, Kindle, 185.
  35. 35. Theodore P. Wright. “Factors Affecting the Cost of Airplanes,” Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences 3 (February 1936): 122–28, https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/research/papers/others/1936/wright1936a.pdf.
  36. 36. “Theodore Paul Wright,” Daniel Guggenheim Medal biography, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1945, https://www.aiaa.org/docs/default-source/uploadedfiles/aiaa-foundation/medalist-for-1945.pdf?sfvrsn=a86c5fcc_2; “National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1943,” December 17, 1943, MIT Museum, https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/GCP-00003754.
  37. 37. “Moore’s Law,” Intel, September 18, 2023, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/resources/moores-law.html#gs.h6ovyc; Gordon E. Moore, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” Electronics 38, no. 8 (April 19, 1965), https://download.intel.com/newsroom/2023/manufacturing/moores-law-electronics.pdf.
  38. 38. “The End of Moore’s Law Will Not Slow the Pace of Change,” Economist, September 16, 2024, https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/the-end-of-moores-law-will-not-slow-the-pace-of-change; Rachel Courtland, “How Much Did Early Transistors Cost? About a Billion Times More Than They Do Now,” IEEE Spectrum, April 16, 2015, https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-much-did-early-transistors-cost.
  39. 39. Nemet, How Solar Energy Became Cheap, Kindle, 78, 148.
  40. 40. Institute for Energy Research, “Chinese Solar Panel Production Issues Are Mounting,” November 18, 2020, https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/chinese-solar-panel-production-issues-are-mounting/.
  41. 41. International Renewable Energy Agency, “Solar Energy,” n.d., https://www.irena.org/Energy-Transition/Technology/Solar-energy#:~:text=The%20cost%20of%20manufacturing%20solar,93%25%20between%202010%20and%202020.
  42. 42. Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser, and Pablo Rosado, “Renewable Energy,” December 2020, rev. January 2024, https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy.
  43. 43. Myra Saefong, “Why Solar Is the Fastest-Growing Source of U.S. Electricity,” MarketWatch, July 9, 2024, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-solar-is-the-fastest-growing-source-of-u-s-electricity-72e7d489?tesla=y.
  44. 44. John Arnold, @JohnArnoldFndtn, tweet, September 27, 2024, 10:40 a.m., https://x.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/1839706693145415989.
  45. 45. “The Third Industrial Revolution,” Economist, April 21, 2012, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/21/the-third-industrial-revolution.
  46. 46. Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2023), Kindle, 8.
  47. 47. Phil Goldstein, “How the Government Helped Spur the Microchip Industry,” FedTech, September 11, 2018, https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2018/09/how-government-helped-spur-microchip-industry.
  48. 48. Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State, Kindle, 8.
  49. 49. Stuart A. Thompson, “How Long Will a Vaccine Really Take?,” New York Times, April 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-covid-vaccine.html.
  50. 50. Jon Cohen, “Unveiling ‘Warp Speed,’ the White House’s America-First Push for a Coronavirus Vaccine,” Science, May 12, 2020, https://www.science.org/content/article/unveiling-warp-speed-white-house-s-america-first-push-coronavirus-vaccine.
  51. 51. David Adler, “Inside Operation Warp Speed: A New Model for Industrial Policy,” American Affairs 5, no. 2 (Summer 2021), https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/inside-operation-warp-speed-a-new-model-for-industrial-policy/.
  52. 52. Derek Thompson, interview with Paul Mango.
  53. 53. Paul Mango, Warp Speed: Inside the Operation That Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds (New York: Republic Book Publishers, 2022), Kindle, loc. 1187.
  54. 54. Derek Thompson, interview with Paul Mango.
  55. 55. Alice Park, “FDA: Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Doesn’t Need Ultra-Cold Freezer Storage,” Time, February 26, 2021, https://time.com/5942452/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-cold-storage-fda/; Deb Balzer, “Inside the Ultracold Freezers That Will House COVID-19 Vaccines,” Mayo Clinic, December 10, 2020, https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/inside-the-ultracold-freezers-that-will-house-covid-19-vaccines/.
  56. 56. “Nonex to Valor® Glass: Corning’s 100-Year History of Life-Saving Innovation for Vaccine Development,” Corning, n.d., https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/innovation/materials-science/glass/vaccine-timeline.html; Jennifer Brant and Mark F. Schultz, “Unprecedented: The Rapid Innovation Response to COVID-19 and the Role of Intellectual Property,” International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, November 2021, https://www.ifpma.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/i2023_Unpacking-IP_2021_Final.pdf.
  57. 57. Megan Molteni, “Vaccine Makers Turn to Microchip Tech to Beat Glass Shortages,” Wired, June 26, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/vaccine-makers-turn-to-microchip-tech-to-beat-glass-shortages/; Bill Bostock, “Inside the US Government’s $347 Million Plan to Fight the Global Glass Vial Shortage Ahead of a Coronavirus Vaccine Rollout,” Business Insider, June 22, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-glass-shortage-operation-warp-speed-corning-sio2-2020-6; Brant and Schultz, “Unprecedented.”
  58. 58. Derek Thompson, interview with Paul Mango.
  59. 59. Derek Thompson, interview with Paul Mango.
  60. 60. Mango, Warp Speed, Kindle, loc. 2386 and loc. 2384.
  61. 61. Derek Thompson, interview with Caleb Watney.
  62. 62. The authors thank David Adler for his analysis of OWS as a model of industrial policy. See Adler, “Inside Operation Warp Speed: A New Model for Industrial Policy,” American Affairs V, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 3–32, https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/inside-operation-warp-speed-a-new-model-for-industrial-policy/.
  63. 63. Hussain S. Lalani et al., “US Public Investment in Development of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines: Retrospective Cohort Study,” BMJ Open Science 380, no. 1 (March 2023): e073747, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9975718/.
  64. 64. “Lives Saved by COVID-19 Vaccines,” Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 10 (September 2022): 1111/jpc.16213, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537923/.
  65. 65. Virat Agrawal, Neeraj Sood, and Christopher M. Whaley, “The Impact of the Global COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign on All-Cause Mortality,” NBER Working Paper 31812, October 2023, https://www.nber.org/papers/w31812.
  66. 66. Jen Psaki, @jrpsaki, tweet, January 15, 2021, 9:44 a.m., https://x.com/jrpsaki/status/1350121790148902912?s=20.
  67. 67. Casey B. Mulligan, “We Need More ‘Warp Speed’ Operations,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-more-operation-warp-speed-covid-cancer-diabetes-bureaucracy-fda-ace77028.
  68. 68. Robert Orr, “Unmatched: Repairing the U.S. Medical Residency Pipeline,” Niskanen Center, September 2021, https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Unmatched-Repairing-the-US-Residency-Pipeline.pdf, 11.
  69. 69. Orr, “Unmatched,” p. 12, fig. 4.
  70. 70. “Population Growth 1980–2005,” U.S. News & World Report, January 9, 2006, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/barone/2006/01/09/population-growth-1980-2005#:~:text=The%20nation’s%20population%20rose%2031,%2C%20and%20Tennessee%20(30).
  71. 71. Derek Thompson, “Why America Has So Few Doctors,” Atlantic, February 14, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/why-does-the-us-make-it-so-hard-to-be-a-doctor/622065/.
  72. 72. Arielle D’Souza, Kendall Hoyt, Christopher M. Snyder, and Alec Stapp, “Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?,” NBER Working Paper 32831, August 2024, https://www.nber.org/papers/w32831.
  73. 73. Susan Athey, Rachel Glennerster, Nan Ransohoff, and Christopher Snyder, “Opinion: Advance Market Commitments Worked for Vaccines. They Could Work for Carbon Removal, Too,” Politico, December 22, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2021/12/22/carbon-removal-advance-market-commitments-525988.
  74. 74. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, 2022, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/.
  75. 75. Nan Ransohoff, “How to Start an Advance Market Commitment,” Works in Progress (newsletter), May 31, 2024, https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-start-an-advance-market-commitment/.
  76. 76. Derek Thompson, interview with Nan Ransohoff.
  77. 77. Vaclav Smil, “The Modern World Can’t Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels,” Time, May 12, 2022, https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/.
  78. 78. Ben Tracy and Analisa Novak, “Cement Industry Accounts for About 8% of CO2 Emissions. One Startup Seeks to Change That,” CBS News, January 16, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cement-industry-co2-emissions-climate-change-brimstone/.
  79. 79. David Wallace-Wells, @dwallacewells, tweet, January 6, 2020, 11:04 p.m., https://x.com/dwallacewells/status/1221675214259605506.
  80. 80. Hannah Ritchie, “How to Decarbonise the World’s Cement,” Sustainability by Numbers (blog), June 30, 2024, https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/low-carbon-cement.
  81. 81. Derek Thompson, interview with Ned Ransohoff.
  82. 82. Derek Thompson, interview with Thomas Kalil.
  83. 83. Leopold Aschenbrenner, “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” June 2024, 87, https://situational-awareness.ai/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/situationalawareness.pdf.
  84. 84. Iphigenie Bera, Destiny Lara, and Damien Koh Tze-In, “GET Israel: Topic 9—Sorek and Overall Desalination Water Supply in Israel,” Northwestern University, September 21, 2022, https://water.northwestern.edu/2022/09/21/get-israel-topic-9-sorek-and-overall-desalination-water-supply-in-israel/.
  85. 85. Sam Altman, “The Intelligence Age.”
  86. 86. Derek Thompson, interview with Paul Mango.
  87. 87. Frank Newport, “Landing a Man on the Moon: The Public’s View,” Gallup, July 20, 1999, https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx.
  88. 88. Roger D. Launius, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of US Human Spaceflight,” Space Policy 19, no. 3 (August 2003): 163–75, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964603000390.
  89. 89. Mark Whitaker, “The Dreams and Dedication Behind Our Leap to the Moon,” Washington Post, review of Charles Fishman, One Giant Leap (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), July 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-dreams-and-dedication-behind-our-leap-to-the-moon/2019/07/11/6ae625f4-9456-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html.

Conclusion: Toward Abundance

  1. 1. Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), Kindle, 153–160.
  2. 2. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Tax Program,” March 15, 1954, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/radio-and-television-address-the-american-people-the-tax-program.
  3. 3. Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, Kindle, 615.
  4. 4. Tom Hayden, The Port Huron Statement, written for the Students for a Democratic Society, June 15, 1962. Courtesy Office of Sen. Tom Hayden, https://images2.americanprogress.org/campus/email/PortHuronStatement.pdf.
  5. 5. Motor Carrier Act, 94 Statute 793, Public Law 96-296, 96th Congress (1980) (enacted), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-94/pdf/STATUTE-94-Pg793.pdf#page=1; Airline Deregulation Act, 92 Statute 1705, Public Law 95-504, 95th Congress (1978) (enacted), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-92/pdf/STATUTE-92-Pg1705.pdf.
  6. 6. Tax Foundation, “Historical US Federal Individual Income Tax Rates & Brackets, 1862–2021,” August 24, 2021, https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/; Adam Carasso and Gene Steuerle, “A Brief History of the Top Tax Rate,” Tax Policy Center, November 25, 2002, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/59856/1000459-A-Brief-History-of-the-Top-Tax-Rate.PDF; Josephine Nesbit, “5 Presidents Who Raised Taxes the Most, and 5 Who Lowered Them: Is Trump One of Them?,” Yahoo! Finance, November 5, 2024, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-presidents-raised-taxes-most-140035413.html#:~:text=Harry%20Truman%2C%201945%2D1953&text=The%20Revenue%20Act%20of%201950,pay%20for%20the%20Korean%20War.
  7. 7. Gary Gerstle, interview with Derek Thompson.
  8. 8. Stefan Becket, “Read the Full VP Debate Transcript from the Walz-Vance Showdown,” October 2, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-vp-debate-transcript-walz-vance-2024/.
  9. 9. Donald Trump, The Economic Club of New York, September 5, 2024, transcript of speech, p. 27, https://www.econclubny.org/documents/10184/109144/20240905_Trump_Transcript.pdf.
  10. 10. Jerusalem Demsas, “Blue States Gave Trump and Vance an Opening,” Atlantic, October 26, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-vance-malthusian-housing-views/680384/.
  11. 11. George Packer, “The Empty Chamber,” New Yorker, August 2, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/09/the-empty-chamber.
  12. 12. “Read Donald Trump’s Speech on Trade,” Time, June 28, 2016, https://time.com/4386335/donald-trump-trade-speech-transcript/.
  13. 13. Donald Trump rallies in Phoenix, Arizona (June 23, 2020), and elsewhere, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQjTCatM0Ww.
  14. 14. Erica York, “Tariff Tracker: Tracking the Economic Impact of the Trump-Biden Tariffs,” Tax Foundation, June 26, 2024, https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-biden-tariffs/.
  15. 15. Ana Swanson, “Biden Administration Clamps Down on China’s Access to Chip Technology,” New York Times, October 7, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/business/economy/biden-chip-technology.html; Michelle Toh and Kayla Tausche, “US Escalates Tech Battle by Cutting China Off from AI Chips,” CNN, October 18, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/tech/us-china-chip-export-curbs-intl-hnk/index.html; Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, 15 CFR Parts 736, 738, 740, 742, 743, 772, and 774 [Docket No. 240813-0217] RIN 0694-AJ60, “Commerce Control List Additions and Revisions; Implementation of Controls on Advanced Technologies Consistent with Controls Implemented by International Partners,” September 6, 2024, https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2024-19633.pdf.
  16. 16. Ana Swanson, “Biden Administration Announces Indo-Pacific Deal, Clashing with Industry Groups,” New York Times, May 27, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/business/economy/biden-indo-pacific-trade-deal.html.
  17. 17. Joe Biden, “Remarks on Signing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” November 6, 2021, transcript by Smith Dawson & Andrews, https://www.sda-inc.com/news/remarks-by-president-biden-on-passage-of-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal/.
  18. 18. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, H.R. 3684, 117th Congress (2021–2022) (enacted), https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text; The White House, “Fact Sheet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal,” November 6, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/06/fact-sheet-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal/.
  19. 19. CHIPS and Science Act, H.R. 434, 117th Congress (2021–2022) (enacted), https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4346.
  20. 20. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, H.R. 5376, 117th Congress (2021–2022) (enacted), https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376/text.
  21. 21. Harris-Walz campaign, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” 2024, https://kamalaharris.com/issues/; Harris-Walz campaign, “Vice President Harris Lays Out Agenda to Lower Costs for American Families,” press release, August 16, 2024, https://mailchi.mp/press.kamalaharris.com/vice-president-harris-lays-out-agenda-to-lower-costs-for-american-families; Josh Boak, “Harris Campaign Releases New Ad to Highlight Plans to Build 3 Million Homes and Reduce Inflation,” AP, August 27, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/harris-trump-housing-home-inflation-build-construction-00ae665790649d3b25d77a6cc0d111d0.
  22. 22. Shannon Osaka, “Biden’s $7.5 Billion Investment in EV Charging Has Only Produced 7 Stations in Two Years,” Washington Post, March 28, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/ev-charging-stations-slow-rollout/.
  23. 23. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated by [Frederick] Engels (1848; Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1888), available at https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/manifesto-of-the-communist-party.
  24. 24. “The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered”: Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.
  25. 25. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925; critical edition published by Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21, 54.
  26. 26. Bell Telephone Magazine, Spring 1964, https://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/articles/bell-telephone-magazine-spring-64.pdf; Damon Darlin, “How the Future Looked in 1964: The Picturephone,” New York Times, June 26, 2014; Bell System Pavilion (photographs), The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, worldsfairphotos.com, Bill Cotter, updated December 27, 2022, https://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/bell-system.htm.
  27. 27. “Westinghouse Time Capsule,” Westland, Jeffrey Stanton, 1997, https://www.westland.net/ny64fair/map-docs/westinghouse.htm#:~:text=A%20window%20along%20one%20side,Robert%20Millikan%20and%20Thomas%20Mann; Westinghouse (photographs), The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, worldsfairphotos.com, Bill Cotter, updated December 27, 2022, https://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/bell-system.htm.
  28. 28. Futurama II (photographs and audio recording), phrenicea.com, John Herman, 2000–2011, https://www.phrenicea.com/futurama_chip.htm.
  29. 29. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the Opening of the New York World’s Fair,” April 22, 1964, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-opening-the-new-york-worlds-fair.
  30. 30. Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, Kindle, 167.
  31. 31. David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 78, 210. And see George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1859–75), https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0326%3Achapter%3D8#note-link69.