We can’t keep going down the path, you can find different paths. We worshipped a #deathcult for 40 years https://hamishcampbell.com/we-worshipped-this-deathcult-for-the-last-40-years/
Neoliberalism is a red herring.
It may be a good policy, it may be a bad policy. The only thing that's truly certain is that it's not been the actual policy of virtually any government on Earth.
Between half and three quarters of the spending in any given Western economy is government. In other words, if the dominant ideological paradigm is reduced government intervention in the markets, and then that paradigm has completely failed. Depending on the economy, there is significantly more government than there is market.
What we end up seeing in practice is a government that is continuing to grow, is continuing to get stronger, but has no use for spending money on public services that don't ensure that they got a cut. Therefore, the word neoliberalism is used to justify reducing quality of services to individuals but in reality that money is not then eliminated from the government coffers, but redirected to new ends that will better serve the rich and the powerful. Your taxes never go down, and even if they do it's only because of the government is borrowing money from future generations to hide the fact that they are stealing so much money from you. Meanwhile there are entire industries that only exist because of government subsidies or regulations.
There are a couple examples from the US politics which really help us see what's going on here. The United States healthcare system spends enough public money to pay for comprehensive single-parent healthcare like the NHS or the Canadian healthcare system. Virtually no conversation about healthcare makes this point. Instead it focuses on Private health insurance that for the most part shouldn't exist for the amount of money being spent by the government. Secondly, the current federal shutdown has much sound in fury behind it, but a surprisingly a large chunk of the federal government is still operating. In fact, the federal government just reached a record high debt in spite of allegedly being shut down. Of course, the part that won't get paid for predominantly include services that might actually relate to the common person, but no one's talking about the fact that most of the federal government is still chugging along. Especially the money being sent to Banks to pay for all of the debt accumulated in the last 20 years.
It may be a good policy, it may be a bad policy. The only thing that's truly certain is that it's not been the actual policy of virtually any government on Earth.
Between half and three quarters of the spending in any given Western economy is government. In other words, if the dominant ideological paradigm is reduced government intervention in the markets, and then that paradigm has completely failed. Depending on the economy, there is significantly more government than there is market.
What we end up seeing in practice is a government that is continuing to grow, is continuing to get stronger, but has no use for spending money on public services that don't ensure that they got a cut. Therefore, the word neoliberalism is used to justify reducing quality of services to individuals but in reality that money is not then eliminated from the government coffers, but redirected to new ends that will better serve the rich and the powerful. Your taxes never go down, and even if they do it's only because of the government is borrowing money from future generations to hide the fact that they are stealing so much money from you. Meanwhile there are entire industries that only exist because of government subsidies or regulations.
There are a couple examples from the US politics which really help us see what's going on here. The United States healthcare system spends enough public money to pay for comprehensive single-parent healthcare like the NHS or the Canadian healthcare system. Virtually no conversation about healthcare makes this point. Instead it focuses on Private health insurance that for the most part shouldn't exist for the amount of money being spent by the government. Secondly, the current federal shutdown has much sound in fury behind it, but a surprisingly a large chunk of the federal government is still operating. In fact, the federal government just reached a record high debt in spite of allegedly being shut down. Of course, the part that won't get paid for predominantly include services that might actually relate to the common person, but no one's talking about the fact that most of the federal government is still chugging along. Especially the money being sent to Banks to pay for all of the debt accumulated in the last 20 years.
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