What It Means to Be Neoliberal
Sounds pretty good. Neo, a new, revised version of liberal, a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties.
I guess I’d like some of that, perhaps even a double-helping
But it’s a play on words to confuse issues and it was invented to do exactly that, to sound great and deliver a crushing defeat to American prosperity.
When you put the two together, the resulting neoliberal is defined as having or showing belief in the need for economic growth in addition to traditional liberalistic values. It’s the ‘in addition’ that spills too many spoons of pepper into the stew.
Mindsets, once created, are hard to change
So says The Atlantic in a recent and prescient piece
“Many Americans still think of the United States as a land of opportunity. They still believe in something called the American dream, even though for decades the statistics have painted a darker picture. The rate of absolute income mobility—that is, the percentage of children who earn more than their parents—has been declining steadily since the Second World War. Of course, America should aspire to be a land of opportunity, but clinging to beliefs that are not supported by today’s realities—and that hold that markets by themselves are a solution to today’s problems—is not helpful. Economic conditions bear this out, as more Americans are coming to understand. Unfettered markets have created, or helped create, many of the central problems we face, including manifold inequalities, the climate crisis, and the opioid crisis. And markets by themselves cannot solve any of our large, collective problems. They cannot manage the massive structural changes that we are going through—including global warming, artificial intelligence, and the realignment of geopolitics.”
As I glance over the realities of America today, I find it difficult to disagree
Bipartisanism, all but gone from state and national politics.
Homelessness, taking over the public spaces of city after city.
An increasing division between the economic haves and have-nots.
Healthcare, that is the laughing-stock of the world, except for those Americans who are without insurance.
Busted unions and the offshoring of vital American industry to Asia.
Payroll tax deductions for the working class and tax-free offshore havens for the rich.
Public schools without music, the arts, debate, science, engineering and career counselors, that ill prepare entry to universities none can afford, and
the demise of the single wage-earner family.
All of which contributes to a society that decides who will serve and who will eat, neatly presented as a ‘new liberalism,’ and if that’s what’s on offer maybe I’ll take a pass
Most of which has occurred in the past half-century, and I’ve been able to side-step the destruction, having chosen to live in Europe these past 31 years. But I keep an eye on the country to which I owe both my birth and citizenship. I am a close observer and sometimes a degree of separation is a way to cool down the language and look more closely at what’s at the core of such decline.
It's not politics and it’s not Trump
Those are the results of 50 years of increasing darkness, not by any means the cause. In theory, neoliberalism was served up as the bedrock basis for political freedom and democratic health. The opposite has proven the case. The rich and elites bought out both government policies and media narratives. Simply put, if you figure out where to get the five or six million dollars to become a senator (or representative) earning $175,000, you better be ready to pay the piper. He or she owns you. You want to know why Big Oil continues to destroy the environment? Check out what companies are paying how much to which congressperson at Open Secrets.org.
All of which leads to a realistic sense by those who are not wealthy that the system is both rigged and unfair
You are not wrong in that.
I know that you have other issues, such as paying the mortgage and keeping the kids in college, but you are not wrong in feeling sold out. It has been said that America has the best government that money can buy and that is not wrong either.
So, what to do?
Pay attention. What took 50 years to screw the country over cannot be undone in the coming election. Perhaps more importantly than that, teach your kids to pay attention. Second, keep track of what your senator or representative is up to, but pay special attention to your school board and local politics. National politicians are what the wealthy serve up to make us believe we actually have some control, but local government is where they ban the books your kids read. It’s also where CRT (Critical Race Theory) struggles to survive and that’s the actual history of the country your kids are growing up in. If they never know the bargains the founding fathers were forced to make, they will never understand why we are so divided today as a nation.
It's critical that they know.
History is on our side
America periodically goes through the growing pains of its establishment as a democratic republic. We are not a democracy. We are a republic, which means we vote for others to vote for us. The founders, in their wisdom, decided that the general public was not educated enough to make important decisions, which was probably true at the time and may remain true today. In their defense, they came from Europe (mostly England) and had their fill of aristocracies.
What they gave us, as Franklin told a woman who questioned him, was “a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Keeping it has not been without challenge. We committed what can hardly be called anything else than a genocide against our native Indian population, fought a Civil War over slavery (one of the agreements to keep Virginia in the Union), fought two world wars and survived a number of economic catastrophes. It hasn’t been easy. Your children have to know that it hasn’t been easy, but neoliberals would like to remove that history from their education by disallowing Critical Race Theory.
You must not allow that, which is why school boards and local politics is of primary concern.
Super Wealth is at a tipping point
They’ve had their way and screwed up, these billionaires. Jeff Bezos’ yacht doesn’t square with families holding three jobs and losing ground. It’s not sustainable and what’s not sustainable cannot be sustained. There’s a law of physics (or something) there—I’m sure of it.
Devos, a small and lovely mountain town in Switzerland, hosts a worldwide gathering of the billionaire class. In January of this year, more than 250 billionaires and millionaires renewed their call on elected representatives of the world’s leading economies to introduce higher taxes on the very richest in society. In an open letter to political leaders gathering at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, the rich signatories said that they wished to deliver a clear message: “Tax our extreme wealth.”
That comes shortly after Oxfam said the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their vast wealth since 2020 and warned that the world could have its first trillionaire within a decade.
Perhaps the vision of ‘pitchforks and barricades’ made an appearance like the ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooge
Who knows?
America is a 248-year-old clock and it has a pendulum that swings in two directions.