History has a lot to teach us. But the most important lesson is so obvious we take it for granted: progress is possible.

If given a time machine, I would love to visit 5th century BC Athens, Renaissance Italy, and Paris in the 20s, but it would be mad to want to live in those times. Even if you were lucky enough to be wealthy (even the wealthiest) life in the past was objectively worse.

As Our World in Data reveals, until around 1800 today’s best-off places were as poor as today’s worst-off places, and child mortality was even worse. Finland, for example, is now one of the healthiest and richest places on the planet. Two centuries ago it was as poor a place as today’s poorest countries, with a child mortality rate much worse than any place in the world today.

This is both a privilege and a responsibility. It’s a responsibility to ensure that those living in the world today can live better lives – in Somalia the mortality rate for children under 5 is 12.7%, while in Iceland it’s 0.12%; in Sierra Leone, life expectancy at birth is 52 years while in Japan it’s 84.1. And we also have a responsibility to future generations that progress continues.

Derek Thompson gets it. Writing in The Atlantic he makes a brilliant case for an abundance agenda. His focus is on America – criticising its failure in restricting everything from doctors, housing, and university places, to infrastructure projects, visas, and nuclear power plants – but the UK has many of the same, and a few different, problems. (Interestingly, Thompson praises the UK in the article for having ordered so many lateral flow tests.)

This agenda runs counter to Cheems Mindset. An all-too-prevalent way of thinking among policymakers, who too regularly dismiss ideas on the basis that it cannot be done, or would be hard to do. As Thompson concludes: “The abundance agenda aims for growth, not because growth is an end but because it is the best means to achieve the ends that we care about: more comfortable lives, with more power to do what we want, with more time devoted to what we love.”

Critically, this is something that can unite people with different political instincts: “This agenda would try to take the best from several ideologies. It would harness the left’s emphasis on human welfare, but it would encourage the progressive movement to “take innovation as seriously as it takes affordability,” as Ezra Klein wrote. It would tap into libertarians’ obsession with regulation to identify places where bad rules are getting in the way of the common good. It would channel the right’s fixation with national greatness to grow the things that actually make a nation great – such as clean and safe spaces, excellent government services, fantastic living conditions, and broadly shared wealth.”

As a think tank, to-date we’ve done a good job at devising, championing and helping enact policies to make the UK more entrepreneurial. But I think we could do a better job of articulating this vision – and making the case for why others, including policymakers, should be as ambitious as we are. After all, entrepreneurs are giving us a lot to be optimistic about.

To paraphrase Thompson, we don’t just want to produce a laundry list of marginal improvements, but a defence of progress and growth.

Female Founders Forum
The bad news: "In 2020, lockdowns and school closures negatively impacted female entrepreneurs far more than their male counterparts. Women were more likely to lose their jobs. Research from America found that women were more likely to be working at the kitchen table, where they were likely to be disturbed by family members, while their male partners took the home office. With schools shut and working home becoming the norm, the number of chores at home increased, and this burden fell disproportionately on women who also had to homeschool children and care for older relatives. During lockdown, British women have taken responsibility for two-thirds more childcare than men and they have also cut down their paid hours. Before the pandemic, mothers worked 80% of the hours that fathers did. During lockdown this dropped to 70%.

The good news: "Women are half as likely to find working from home difficult. Remote work offers many advantages in terms of flexibility, which is very useful in the context of managing childcare responsibilities. Instead of having to pay for full time childcare, mothers may be able to keep their young children at home while working. Flexible working will also make it easier to manage a school run around other commitments. As a result, we may see fewer women dropping out of the workforce when they have children which means they will continue to build skills, rise higher in their profession, and start successful businesses."

Read Aria Babu's whole article here and sign up for the Female Founders Forum newsletter here.