Family First
We need to build a political and economic system that provides an abundance of what families need, starting with care.
I recently received a campaign pitch that truly surprised me. It was from a Democrat named Robb Ryerse running for Congress in Arkansas. What specifically caught my attention was the way he formulated his three core values: “Faith, Family, and Freedom.”
Our job here at The Renovator is not to pitch specific candidates or parties. We want to renovate and build a better democracy for all Americans. Ryerse’s framing of his values as a Democratic candidate offers an interesting possible path to a trans-partisan coalition, since, as many of you know, the Republican Party for a long time summarized its values as “Faith, Family, and Flag.” Ryerse defines “faith” as “faith that public service can be principled,” which is not the traditional Republican meaning. On family, however, the overlap is clear.
Ryerse elaborates his commitment to family as “something every policy should strengthen.” I could not agree more, and I have a lot of company. The inaugural American Values Index poll released by the Aspen Institute and Gallup this summer shows that 49 percent of Americans list family as their most important value, nearly 20 percentage points above the second highest, which is freedom.
This finding can provide a foundation for the building of a new American narrative, one that recognizes that family and community have always been as essential to our thriving as a nation as those rugged individuals we are always celebrating.
I’ll be writing more about that in the months to come; the one-sidedness of the traditional American narrative on the side of individualism versus belonging is a hobbyhorse of mine. Today, however, I want to talk about the connections, or disconnections, between family and the Abundance agenda that has been gaining steam across the country.
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson published their book Abundance in February; it became a surprise New York Times bestseller and is drawing support from the center-left to the libertarian right.
I recommend reading it, both for what’s in it and for what’s not. The basic thesis is one that is very congenial to this column: “To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.” Yet “the story of America in the twenty-first century is the story of chosen scarcities.” What are those scarcities? “[H]omes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs.” How do we fix them? According to Klein and Thompson, by getting rid of the regulations that are hobbling the inventors and entrepreneurs itching to give consumers what they want and need, and then providing Americans with the means to actually afford the wonders that are produced.
In the past, Klein and Thompson argue, Democrats provided government assistance to make things more affordable without paying attention to constraints on supply, while Republicans insisted on letting “the market work its magic” without paying attention to affordability. The result was the worst of all worlds. Subsidizing demand while choking supply led to scarcity and skyrocketing prices for the things that enable a middle-class lifestyle: Housing, health insurance, education, and energy.
Read the book and decide what you think of their solutions. I applaud their introduction of a new set of arguments into American political debates, their focus on building government capacity, and the building of an actual network of supporters from both parties who are working to get things done at the local level.
But for all readers who have aging parents, children, or family members who are ill or who have disabilities, or who are planning on aging yourselves, maybe you noticed the same glaring omission I did in the list of “chosen scarcities.” Have you tried to find in-home care or high-quality institutional care for your parents? The cost is astronomical: between $250,000 to $300,000 a year for non-medical care; the price rises steeply for skilled nursing. The quality of institutions is highly variable, with long waiting lists. And family members who provide care themselves receive little recognition or support.
At the beginning of life, matters are no better. According to Care.com’s 2025 Cost of Care Report, the average parent says they are spending 22 percent of their household income on childcare, more than triple the 7 percent the Department of Health and Human Services uses as a benchmark. Families who would prefer to have the ability to provide care themselves find that their care is not valued or supported by employers or the government.
Both Klein and Thompson are parents. They cannot be unaware of the crisis posed by a scarcity of care. Yet the words “child care” appear only nine times in Abundance. Elder care does not appear at all. “Housing,” by contrast, appears 273 times.
Let’s review the bidding. Nearly 50% of Americans list family as their highest value, the only thing that more than a scant third of us can agree on. Donald Trump himself pointed out the dramatic scarcity of childcare during his first term, noting: “In more than 60% of American homes, both parents work. Yet many struggle to afford child care, which often costs more than $10,000 per year. And it’s devastating to families, frankly. Devastating.”
10,000 Americans turn 65 every day; the crisis of elder care is well documented. All this care requires public support, or else a return to an economy in which only one breadwinner can support a family. As Eliot Haspel documents in his new book Raising a Nation: Ten Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Childcare for All, economists have long understood why labor-centric industries like care create market failures; they cannot harvest economies of scale to turn efficiency into increased productivity.
Haspel’s ten reasons for governments to take action to make care universally accessible include patriotism, family values, national security, and healthy communities. An Abundance agenda that does not include care appears to value an abundance of material goods more than the emotional and spiritual plenty of human connection, not to mention the future of our children and the dignity of our elders.
A society that chooses a scarcity of care is the antithesis of a society that ensures that all of its policies strengthen family. Care is the core of what a family or a community is—not just physical care, but material, emotional, and spiritual support. Building a society that focuses on an abundance of care, however it is provided, means building a future in which families and communities will thrive.
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