Will the ‘Abundance’ Agenda Make California Great Again?
Up until the 1970s, California was a state known for its commitment to boundless opportunities, with the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown governorship reflective of the can-do spirit that drew people here from across the world. Given the degree to which modern California is noted for its ineffectiveness, wastefulness, and regulatory sclerosis, it’s difficult to imagine a California that took its Golden State moniker seriously.
Brown “envisioned a future in which economic growth would be driven by a network of state-of-the-art freeways to move people, reservoirs, and canals to capture and transport water and intellectual capital from low-cost institutions of higher education. He sold that vision to the public and, in doing so, as the late historian Kevin Starr wrote, putting California on “the cutting edge of the American experiment,” per a Hoover Institution retrospective. The state grew dramatically as a result.
The Brown administration built most of the State Water Project in less time than it would take to complete an Environmental Impact Report these days. California officials still have big dreams, of course, but they are more of the social-engineering variety than the civil-engineering type. Brown built freeways that people actually use, whereas today’s big project is a pointless high-speed rail line that’s way over budget and unlikely to serve any serious need.
It took 24 years to build a new east span of the Bay Bridge—and it came in at 2,500% over budget. California can’t even house its population now, thanks largely to environmental rules, no-growth restrictions, urban-growth boundaries, and other government regulations. Yet California lawmakers show no appetite to reform the biggest impediment, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), except on a piecemeal basis. Many liberals are frustrated, and conservatives now are the ones most likely to tout the Pat Brown era.
But a funny thing is happening as progressives struggle for a response to a revanchist MAGA movement that shows its own nativist hostility to economic growth and opportunity. Many of the Left’s more thoughtful voices are essentially re-embracing the types of pro-growth policies that were once a mainstay among Democrats such as Pat Brown. Ironically, it was Brown’s son, Jerry, who during his first term as governor (he actually was a good governor in his more recent iteration), pitched the “era of limits” nonsense that mucked up the works.
Like all burgeoning political movements, this Pat-Brown-style liberalism has a name: the Abundance Movement. We’ve seen some signs of its emergence. For instance, the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement has scored myriad
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