What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?

That has left room for liberals to embrace what Republicans have abandoned: a politics of abundance. In fact, there are signs that they already are.

“For a political order to triumph, it must have a narrative, a story it tells about the good life,” Gerstle says. Today’s politics are suffused with cynicism and pessimism about government because “a way of living sold to us as good and achievable is no longer good, or no longer achievable.”

A 1965 Gallup survey found that “only 39 percent of Americans thought that the US should do everything possible, regardless of cost, to be the first nation on the moon.”

“Cement could be perfect for an AMC, because the government already buys forty percent of US cement, and suppliers don’t know who will pay high prices in the short

In Israel, one of the world leaders in desalination, desalination accounts for about 3 percent of the country’s total energy consumption.

If push funding pays for effort, pull funding pays for success.72 Warp Speed used both.

Every year, the world produces about 4 billion tons of cement to make concrete and other binding agents.77 By most estimates, cement is responsible for 8 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions.

The US has fewer primary-care physicians as a share of its population than almost any other rich country, despite having the world’s most expensive health-care system.