Canberra is in the grip of Abundance fever, a virus that threatens to overwhelm public policy with a diagnosis of overregulation.

For those afflicted, the treatment is to maintain the status quo, but with the sheen of progressivism.

The Abundance agenda is being presented as a panacea for all of America’s problems, and therefore also Australia’s problems. It’s shaping next week’s productivity summit, as policy wonks, institutional heads, journalists and most government MPs hold up the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson book as the new bible.

In America, the authors have been invited to speak at Democratic retreats as the answer to their woes, even as polling, the New York mayoral primary and the exasperated hair-pulling of millions of Americans say they’d much prefer Bernie Sanders’ socialism. But why change when you can do more of the same and call it abundance?

There are some thoughtful arguments in the book, but the crux of it boils down to “everything would be just fantastic and problem free if we just cut the red tape that was holding back all that abundance we could be throwing around”.

Establishment Democrats love it because it sounds like a way of kick starting a progressive agenda (Free healthcare! Jobs for all! Shorter work weeks! Affordable housing!) by doing nothing to challenge the existing economic status quo and just cutting more regulations. Just cut red tape and bada bing, bada........

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