Ezra Klein to Gov. Newsom: Why is It So Much Harder to Build in California Than in Texas?

Earliier today, David wrote about Ezra Klein’s appearance on Jon Stewart’s show. Klein managed to blow Stewart’s mind by discussing the layers of red tape involved in trying to give away federal money.

On the one hand it’s great to see someone making this case. On the other hand it’s also sort of laughable to have Klein, the champion of Obamacare, making the case that government is terribly inefficient and to have Stewart react to this message as if it’s breaking news. I mean, really, Jon. Republicans have been making this case about government since at least Ronald Reagan.

There’s an insularity problem on the left and in the media. Things Republicans say every day get ignored until some Democrat says something like “I don’t like those hateful Barbarians, but they have a point about X.” I think that’s what is happening here. All Klein is doing is channeling decades of conservative critique minus the conservatives and suddenly the left gets it. It’s frustrating to say the least.

But if you can put all that aside, it’s nevertheless true that conservative ideas are being put forward in a compelling way. In addition to his interview with Stewart, Klein also appeared on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s show/podcast. 

So much of “Abundance” is about failures of government in California specifically. So I was pretty damn interested to hear what @GavinNewsom thought of it, and how he’d answer some of those critiques…

Then he invited me on his podcast.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 26, 2025

The discussion started with some pleasantries because really these are two guys who probably don’t have a lot of daylight between them politically. But pretty quickly Klein moved to the issue of housing and why it is so hard to build in California. Newsom tried to claim that was true everywhere at which point Klein simply asked him why it’s easier to build in Texas and Florida than it is in California or New York.

Ezra Klein asks Gavin Newsom why cities and states run by Democrats are not efficient, and Gavin responds quite inefficiently:
Ezra Klein: “Why is it easier to build homes in Texas than California?”
Gavin Newsom: “The supply demand imbalance: That supply demand imbalance is next… pic.twitter.com/JmA084Clus

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 26, 2025

I’ve watched this 3 times and I still have trouble following what Newsom is saying here. He seems to simultaneously be saying that all cities (red or blue) have the same problems and also that he completely agrees with Klein’s analysis. But Klein is not saying this problem is true everywhere, he’s specifically arguing that it is worse in blue cities and blue states. Newsom clearly does not agree even as he admits the problem in California is “next level.”

Klein then pressed Newsom on why the state has failed to meet it’s goals for new housing.

Ezra Klein: What was the housing goal you set?

Gavin Newsom: 2.5 million units by 2030.

Ezra Klein: So you’re not on track for that?

Gavin Newsom: Not even close. pic.twitter.com/F79dRWjnDx

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) March 26, 2025

A bit later, Newsom says something pretty interesting about the mindset that he sees driving a lot of the resistance to building more homes. “You’ve got an ideological war that is going on in progressive cities that don’t…they don’t believe in supply and demand frankly. They don’t believe in this notion of abundance fundamentally. They have a de-growth mindset…and so you’re struggling with that ideological spectrum.”

In other words, you have a lot of die-hard anti-capitalists in California who aren’t interested in seeing the market work. I think that’s very true, especially in the Bay Area but also in other cities on the west coast like Portland and Seattle which have similar problems.

Basically, Newsom’s answer to the housing challenge is NIMBYs. Local people resist change. But then Klein pointed out that, under Obama, there was a big stimulus bill with 3 major policy goals. What actually got done? Next to nothing.

Ezra Klein explains how it feels to be a Democrat in under 30 seconds:
Ezra Klein: “The stimulus bill under Obama, that had 3 big headline projects for reinvestment.
High speed rail, smart grid, a nation wide system of interoperable health records. 0 for 3″
Gavin Newsom: “I… pic.twitter.com/Rlq1z8fGRb

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 26, 2025

In this case, you can’t blame the problem on NIMBYism. The money never even got that far. The problem was overregulation from the top down.

Klein take is that he wants government to succeed in delivering Democratic/progressive wins but in order to do that it needs to actually function. And right now it arguably does not function much of the time. Even when the money is appropriate and the bills are passed, very little comes to fruition. As he put it, the problem is a culture. “There is something wrong in a culture that so often fails to deliver what it promises,” he said.

This isn’t identical to the conservative argument against government which is more along the lines of less government is usually better than more government, but it does share the critique that the bloated monstrosity we currently have doesn’t work and, to be blunt, needs to be DOGE’d good and hard. 

I’ll just add in passing that the reason I’m in the conservative camp and not the liberal camp (one of them) is that I don’t think what Klein envisions ever works. Fundamentally, government doesn’t produce things is slows them down. Sometimes that’s useful or necessary, but I don’t think government will ever be the source of abundance, only the private sector can do that. Government will continue tripping over its own feet and Democrats will, mostly, continue pretending not to see it.

Here’s the full discussion.