Tech Group Launches “Abundance & Affordability” Project Focused on Americans’ Highest Costs

Middlebury College Professor Gary Winslett joins as Senior Advisor; Agenda will focus on rising costs in housing, care, energy – and need to build

May 1, 2024

With Americans facing spiraling costs for housing, health care, child care, and energy – and roadblocks standing in the way of building – Chamber of Progress today announced a new project to develop an “Abundance & Affordability Agenda” focused on reducing those costs by dramatically increasing the supply of key goods and services, and removing barriers to building. The new program comes amid an election cycle in which voters have ranked cost of living as a top priority.

Chamber of Progress – a center-left tech industry association – is adding Middlebury  College Professor Gary Winslett as a Senior Advisor to develop the agenda over the coming months.

In a blog post detailing the project, Winslett urged Democrats to respond to rising costs by taking concrete action to increase the supply of goods and services most impacting Americans’ pocketbooks, including housing, energy, and health care.

“Democrats should imagine a world where Americans of all social classes have good housing that doesn’t eat 40 percent of their paycheck, where fighting climate change and growing the economy go hand-in-hand, and where everyone can afford the services like medical care and childcare that they need to live a full life,” Winslett writes in his blog post. ”When we take action to increase supply, every American can live where they want, work how they want, dream whatever dreams for themselves and their children that they want, regardless of where they’re from.”

The project will articulate a vision of “liberalism that builds” infrastructure, housing, green energy, and other needed services.  

Chamber of Progress Founder and CEO Adam Kovacevich explained why the organization is expanding its work in this area, saying “Americans are telling politicians that daily life has become too expensive, and too many Democrats are ignoring the problem or failing to tackle the supply constraints at the heart of the problem.  I know many Democratic policymakers want to tackle the rising cost of living and need to build, but aren’t sure how.  Our hope is to add to that conversation.”

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Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org) is a center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology’s progressive future.  We work to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.  

Our corporate partners do not have a vote on or veto over our positions. We do not speak for individual partner companies and remain true to our stated principles even when our partners disagree.