The article seems a bit vague as to what it means by neoliberalism. It seems to mean the belief that unregulated free markets won't go wrong which I'm not sure anyone really had. Some bits seem to work OK like letting people trade goods and services and some lead to problems like German banks lending to property speculators in Greece and then wanting to be bailed out when the whole thing tanks. The latter was more straight dumb than anything else, at least with hindsight. I'm not sure there's anyone saying I'm a neoliberal and funding the Greek bubble was a good idea. It's a bit of a strawman.
The death of neoliberalism from within
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Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#22Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…
To be fair, it is the IMF - their inherent mission is to lend, it's even in their name.
Lend to 3rd world plutocrats, then hold their countries responsible for the debt when they run off with the money.
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#23I am glad the author cites Red Plenty. That is a really excellent book that I think a lot of HN readers would like. It really takes you into frame of mind since lost, with poignance and good characters.
It is important to note we live in an age of diminished expectations not just for what capitalism can do but for what government can do, too. Thus, I'm not sure if the fact neoliberalism is disappointing actually means we need a new system.
Do we need bigger government, than the current trend, in the US? The government is projected to grow quite a lot as is. We spend more and more money on education and health care every year, with disappointing results. Look at the Medicaid experiment in Oregon: Finkelstein et al (2015) find very little positive health impacts. Obamacare has cut the number of uninsured, but I would guess its impact on actual health will turn out to be very mild. Access to health care and spending on health care are not very much correlated with health outcomes, as the more costly health care is based on deliberate obfuscation or sloppy statistics or promises meager gains (e.g., slightly shrinking a tumor) in the first place. Neither charter schools, on average, nor public school reforms seem to have helped close the opportunity gap much. The Iraq/Afghanistan wars cost like $2 trillion. Many of the largest public pension plans around the US do not have enough assets to make ends meet, even counting on delusional 7 percent returns! Prisons exploded, and nobody seems happy with that. That land-use regulation has become baroque and suffocating shakedown is something I don't think I need to convince anyone in the Bay of. The best cars are made in non-union shops (e.g., tesla and all the new southern factories).
It is interesting that things generally are moving slowly on all fronts, but I don't think that's necessarily a reason to change course. If you are stuck in a slow left lane of traffic, it doesn't necessarily mean you should get in the right lane.
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, there's nothing free-market about government run Health Care or Schools. This is another case of people using words they don't understand.
As a general rule, I'd be very cautious before assuming that a columnist for The Economist doesn't understand what he is talking about. You may disagree with his conclusions, but that's a different matter. What I believe he's talking about is the introduction of free market dynamics to schools and single-payer health care, two institutions that have been resolutely socialist (in the classical sense of the word) for a…
The author of the editorial is from the guardian, not the Economist.
The individual using the NHS/Schools as examples was the IMF author, not the editorial writer.
I never said either didn't understand economics. I said he didn't understand some of the words he was using. I was referring to the use of "neoliberalism" & "laissez faire"
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#25Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…
To be fair, it is the IMF - their inherent mission is to lend, it's even in their name.
What does lending government money to other governments have to do with the free market?
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#26The big question then is what replaces laissez faire economics and how? How do we take the best of the free market while ensuring that governments and public sectors are also robust? I feel like software and technology must have a huge role here, but don't know enough to be able to point out specific solutions.
We have to actually have laissez faire economics before we can replace it with something.
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#27Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…
And removing the government would give the rich 100% control. So what would be a solution?
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, it is the IMF - their inherent mission is to lend, it's even in their name.
Lend to 3rd world plutocrats, then hold their countries responsible for the debt when they run off with the money.
I'm not agreeing with the strategy, it just seemed like the OP had a problem with what the IMF does. For the IMF to stop, it would have to dissolve.
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#29Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…
You're blaming government regulations! That's absurd given many people at this point have said that the deregulation of the 90's on the financial sector is what lead to much of our housing financial crisis, not to mention the widening pay gap.
Your comment might actually be a good representation of how Neoliberal ideas of deregulation will continue to flourish despite them hampering to middle and lower classes. People will just say it's different sorts of regulations causing the problem, going even further down that path...
EDIT:
What's scary to consider is the era of strong wage increases and financial regulation from the 50's to 80's only started by a cataclysmic event, the Great Depression. Given how many large corporations and well off people benefit from the current system it's hard to imagine how we will see real increase in financial regulation similar to the Glass–Steagall Legislation until something of similar magnitude happens.
Given climate change is only going to get worse, I guess a pretty big catastrophe coming our way and causing similar change soon-ish isn't that far fetched.
Re: The death of neoliberalism from within
#30Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…
Markets don't exist without States. You cannot have a market without a State, and therefore you cannot have a "free market". They don't exists. The idea that there is or can be a free market is one of the great myths of our civilization (along with the idea that humans started out with barter based economies. We didn't. The earliest economies in human history were based around credit).
I highly recommend the book Debt: The First 5000 Years. It's pretty life changing.