As I previously promised, here's some information about why #neoliberalism is an irrelevant misdirection when talking about today's problems.
Neoliberalism is essentially the idea that we should let people and economies be free to do what they're going to do and then it'll be better for everyone. The policy consequences of this ideology ought to be lower taxes, lower government spending, staying away from government debt, and less regulation overall.
People can blame neoliberalism, but in a lot of ways neoliberalism failed. Neoliberalism has features like lower taxes and less regulation, but we're living in the highest taxed, most regulated times in human history. That's part of the problem. Blue collar folks are paying well over half their income to government, and what do they see around them? Tent cities, crime waves, good people losing their homes working three jobs while people who are snuggly with the government (and for those on the Elon Musk hate train, where do you think his billions came from?) become the richest people in human history. Despite the massive taxation, governments can't keep it in their pants, and so every government out there has massively increased their debts in the recent decades. My own country doubled its national debt, my home province increased its debt by several times, and meanwhile households are at record high debt levels and record low savings levels.
What we've actually seen is an overwhelming state stealing virtually everything from the middle class and handing it to the most powerful people on earth. That isn't neoliberalism by any definition -- it's just corruption.
The United States has an interesting case because one of the taxes is specifically for healthcare, and yet most people need health insurance. This sort of heavy corruption is what I'm talking about -- People pay enough money for a thing once through heavy taxation, then the system is so busy siphoning money to powerful interests that people need to go broke paying for a parallel system to get the thing they need, and sometimes even that parallel system fails individuals. The per capita public money spent on healthcare in the United States is the same as countries with universal healthcare, and that money isn't earmarked for research(a common argument made), it's earmarked for direct care.
Occasionally we see a little bit of deregulation here or there, but that's largely irrelevant next to the whole -- a massive, bloated central authority that tells us every little thing gives a tiny sliver or freedom back, then we blame all the problems in the world on that? It's absurd.
The 2008 financial crisis was blamed on deregulation, but the reality is much more complicated -- the banks that caused the collapse may have been slightly deregulated, but they are one of the most government protected forms of business on the planet, including having the literal money printer at the central reserve created solely to keep them in business. The banks were dealing in loans that were in one form or another insured by the government, paid for with deposits that are insured by the government, following directives by the government, and then when a little slice comes off of that people say it's lack of regulation that caused the problem, when in reality it's all the government money propping up the whole sector that let things get as bad as they did!
For many people in the western world, if they make an extra dollar, the government gets half. In some places it's even higher, closer to 75%. That level of taxation isn't compatible with the concept of neoliberalism. In many places debt/gdp ratios are exceeding 100%, that level of spending isn't compatible with the concept of neoliberalism, which advocates for lower government spending.
To give an idea of what another view of the universe might look like, prior to just before the world wars, there was no personal income tax in the United States or Canada. What might your life look like if you had that burden lifted from your shoulders? That's the question neoliberalism asks, but that's not a question even within the Overton window today.
Neoliberalism is essentially the idea that we should let people and economies be free to do what they're going to do and then it'll be better for everyone. The policy consequences of this ideology ought to be lower taxes, lower government spending, staying away from government debt, and less regulation overall.
People can blame neoliberalism, but in a lot of ways neoliberalism failed. Neoliberalism has features like lower taxes and less regulation, but we're living in the highest taxed, most regulated times in human history. That's part of the problem. Blue collar folks are paying well over half their income to government, and what do they see around them? Tent cities, crime waves, good people losing their homes working three jobs while people who are snuggly with the government (and for those on the Elon Musk hate train, where do you think his billions came from?) become the richest people in human history. Despite the massive taxation, governments can't keep it in their pants, and so every government out there has massively increased their debts in the recent decades. My own country doubled its national debt, my home province increased its debt by several times, and meanwhile households are at record high debt levels and record low savings levels.
What we've actually seen is an overwhelming state stealing virtually everything from the middle class and handing it to the most powerful people on earth. That isn't neoliberalism by any definition -- it's just corruption.
The United States has an interesting case because one of the taxes is specifically for healthcare, and yet most people need health insurance. This sort of heavy corruption is what I'm talking about -- People pay enough money for a thing once through heavy taxation, then the system is so busy siphoning money to powerful interests that people need to go broke paying for a parallel system to get the thing they need, and sometimes even that parallel system fails individuals. The per capita public money spent on healthcare in the United States is the same as countries with universal healthcare, and that money isn't earmarked for research(a common argument made), it's earmarked for direct care.
Occasionally we see a little bit of deregulation here or there, but that's largely irrelevant next to the whole -- a massive, bloated central authority that tells us every little thing gives a tiny sliver or freedom back, then we blame all the problems in the world on that? It's absurd.
The 2008 financial crisis was blamed on deregulation, but the reality is much more complicated -- the banks that caused the collapse may have been slightly deregulated, but they are one of the most government protected forms of business on the planet, including having the literal money printer at the central reserve created solely to keep them in business. The banks were dealing in loans that were in one form or another insured by the government, paid for with deposits that are insured by the government, following directives by the government, and then when a little slice comes off of that people say it's lack of regulation that caused the problem, when in reality it's all the government money propping up the whole sector that let things get as bad as they did!
For many people in the western world, if they make an extra dollar, the government gets half. In some places it's even higher, closer to 75%. That level of taxation isn't compatible with the concept of neoliberalism. In many places debt/gdp ratios are exceeding 100%, that level of spending isn't compatible with the concept of neoliberalism, which advocates for lower government spending.
To give an idea of what another view of the universe might look like, prior to just before the world wars, there was no personal income tax in the United States or Canada. What might your life look like if you had that burden lifted from your shoulders? That's the question neoliberalism asks, but that's not a question even within the Overton window today.
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