# Ezra Klein is an anti-intellectual (Part 1 of 3) Date: 2025-06-06 Next Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/ezra-klein-is-an-anti-intellectual.part2.md --- --- ### Ezra Klein is an anti-intellectual Finally got *Abundance* from the library as I refuse to fund this nonsense (hopefully I’m not causing the library to buy another license). *Abundance* purports to be a vision of the future. In order for that to be true it has to solve three potentially catastrophic problems: * climate change * baby bust (there is nothing wrong with decreasing population but sometime in the future it has to stabilize) * wealth inequality (I believe wealth inequality causes the rise of fascism but even if not you again need to stabilize in the future or all the world’s resources will be in a few hands — this happens sooner than you think because of a snowball effect see [Capital in the Twenty-First Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century)) Below I show that *Abundance* does a poor job solving anything, but particularly wealth inequality. Laying out a vision of the future where humanity basically fails is anti-intellectual at best and oligarchy inspired corrupt ideology at worst. Here on page seven *Abundance* says: > In 1950, the median home price was 2.2 times the average annual income; by 2020, it was 6 times the average annual income. In the 1950s poverty was [double what it is now](https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/poverty-united-states/#:~:text=In%20the%20late%201950s%2C%20the,million%20Americans%20living%20in%20poverty.) (says Google though that is [hard to measure](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/cfe30j/poverty_in_the_united_states_today_vs_1950/)), they didn’t have most appliances or large homes, and overall it was a time of **extreme** scarcity of consumption compared to now: ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/ezra-klein-is-an-anti-intellectual-7e2d36ff4f.png) [Side note: If we are consuming more now, isn’t that a win for neoliberalism? No because 1) anything that leads to wealth inequality and fascism isn’t sustainable and 2) heavy neoliberalism started in the 1980s.] Then when you follow the footnote link for that sentence it is all about [using better regulations to lower housing costs](https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/01/why-housing-appreciation-is-killing-housing/): > Improving renter protections, expanding social housing and more tightly regulating the mortgage market would slow down housing appreciation. Cutting down on short-term rentals and vacation homes also has a dramatic impact on housing affordability. In a recent study, MIT, UCLA, and USC found that for every 10% growth in Airbnb listings, a [zip code’s average rent increased by 0.4%](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/08/where-airbnb-is-raising-rents/535674/). > Another solution would be to limit foreign investment and speculation. When Vancouver passed a 15% tax on all sales to foreign home buyers, the price of [single family property dropped 20%](https://qz.com/1212136/vancouvers-speculation-tax-targets-chinese-property-investors-in-hopes-of-gettin%20g-its-housing-market-under-control/) before rebounding, giving housing appreciation a short-term respite. > A more dramatic intervention would be to reverse the trend of corporations getting into the housing market and reintroduce public land ownership. From 2013 to 2015, [corporations purchased almost $2 trillion worth of land and buildings](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should%20-concern-us-all) in the world’s top 100 cities. Then on page 14 of *Abundance*: > Too often, the right sees only the imagined glories of the past, and the left sees only the injustices of the present. Our sympathies there lie with the left, but that is not a debate we can settle. What is often missing from both sides is a clearly articulated vision of the future and how it differs from the present. This book is a sketch of, and argument for, one such vision. Then on page 24: > Too many have bought into a perverse inversion of what the city should be. Cities are where wealth is created, not just where it is displayed. They are meant to be escalators into the middle class, not penthouses for the upper class. But through bad policy and worse politics, we are doing in the twenty-first century what we so feared in the nineteenth: we are closing the American frontier. Klein and Thompson’s vision for the future is that ever increasing wealth inequality won’t matter because everyone will have a house. Where have we heard that one before? Oh that’s right it’s the standard neoliberal “home ownership society” [abundance bullshit](https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2025-04-01-last-abundance-agenda/) that got us into the 2008 financial crisis. On page 31: > Consider the fortunes of janitors and lawyers, Ganong and Shoag write. Janitors and lawyers have long made more money working in New York than in the Deep South. As a result, many migrated from the Deep South to New York. But as housing costs in New York rose, the benefits of migration crumbled, at least for the janitors. The lawyers still came out ahead, but the janitors saw housing consume more than 50 percent of their paychecks. Again from Google (cause there is only so hard I am willing to work cleaning up Klein’s mess): * The median annual wage for janitors and building cleaners in the United States was $35,930 in May 2024. * The median annual wage for lawyers was $151,160 in May 2024. Of course the situation is much much worse than the story incomes tell. An American who can buy stocks or a house in the right neighborhood will get a very high rate of return. The stock purchases require the right job. The “right” neighborhood is defined by gentrification. Then health care and child education follow from the right job and neighborhood also. But supposedly in Klein’s America of the past, the janitor moving to a major city was able to overcome the inequality and secure upward mobility for his children. Cause if not upward mobility then what was the point? [Side note: Klein and I’s disagreement here might be subtle but 1) the city of the past was not going to help the migrating janitor get out of poverty and 2) Even giving the janitor of the present back 50% of his salary lost on housing, he is then at $60K and still thoroughly screwed by health care, child education, not owning stocks or a house in the right neighborhood.] From page 32: > We made mobility into an engine of inequality, and we did it on purpose, using policy levers that made life in dynamic cities too costly for the poor to afford. Except that: * America never had the **upward** mobility Klein imagines. Cities were and are so called “dynamic” only for the right people. * Inequality caused cities to become expensive not the other way around. IE bankers / software engineers got rich and gentrified New York / San Francisco and implemented exclusionary policies. Not exclusionary policies were implemented leading to the wealth inequality of bankers / software engineers. Where I live in Silicon Valley it was fruit orchards before the engineers came. * Policy levers are to blame for inequality but they are the same neoliberal, mostly federal, policies we all knew about throughout. * The [everyone move to the cities](https://www.koreaherald.com/article/3326707#:~:text=As%20of%20December%202023%2C%20the%20registered%20populations,50.7%20percent%20of%20the%20country%27s%20total%20population.) and be upwardly mobile bullshit has already been tried “The Seoul Metropolitan Area, which includes Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province, is home to more than half (50.7%) of the country’s total population.” [Side note: One might argue that moving to the cities is working in that it is better than the rural life. However 1) Not better enough for South Korea to avoid a near miss with fascism and 2) Not better enough to stem the rising wealth inequality shown [here](https://wid.world/news-article/income-inequality-in-south-korea-1933-2022/).] Page 46: --- **[Continue reading Part 2 of 3](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/ezra-klein-is-an-anti-intellectual.part2.md)**