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Neoliberalism | US Political Polarization - Cynical > .'79-'90 Margaret Thatcher's Monetarism - Learning > .
Neoliberalism (or neo-liberalism) is a term used to describe the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with economic liberalism and free-market capitalism. It is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society; however, the defining features of neoliberalism in both thought and practice have been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. In policymaking, neoliberalism was part of a paradigm shift away from the prevailing Keynesian economic consensus that existed prior to the persistent stagflation of the 1970s.
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Neoliberalism partly explains why the USA has become so unequal over the course of this party system. As a result, the US increasingly divided politically. The economy has more influence than anything else upon political opinions, so neoliberalism is the most important component of America's political polarization.
The Adam Smith Institute, a United Kingdom-based free-market think tank and lobbying group formed in 1977 which was a major driver of the aforementioned neoliberal reforms, officially changed its libertarian label to neoliberal in October 2016.
According to economists Denzau and Roy, the "shift from Keynesian ideas toward neoliberalism influenced the fiscal policy strategies of New Democrats and New Labour in both the White House and Whitehall....Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, and Blair all adopted broadly similar neoliberal beliefs."
English speakers have used the term neoliberalism since the start of the 20th century with different meanings, but it became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s, used by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences as well as by critics. The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies. Some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people as neoliberalism has "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world. Neoliberalism shares many attributes with other concepts that have contested meanings, including representative democracy.
The definition and usage of the term have changed over time. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s as they attempted to revive and renew central ideas from classical liberalism as they saw these ideas diminish in popularity, overtaken by a desire to control markets, following the Great Depression and manifested in policies designed to counter the volatility of free markets, and mitigate their negative social consequences. One impetus for the formulation of policies to mitigate free-market volatility was a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, failures sometimes attributed principally to the economic policy of classical liberalism.
When the term entered into common use in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, it quickly took on negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of Mont Pelerin Society economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan. Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and with the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has grown over the last few decades.
Anarcho-capitalism .
Beltway libertarianism .
Capitalism .
Classical liberalism .
Conservatism in the United States .
Cultural globalization .
Economic globalization .
Economic liberalism .
Elite theory .
Free market .
Globalism .
Globalization .
History of macroeconomic thought .
Inverted totalitarianism .
Late capitalism .
Neoclassical economics .
Neoclassical liberalism .
Neoconservatism .
Neo-libertarianism .
Objectivism .
Political Economy .
Reagan Democrat .
Reaganomics .
Reason magazine .
Right libertarianism .
Shock therapy (economics) .
Thatcherism .
Triangulation .
Trickle-down economics .
Monetarism ..
Sociopolitical Conflict
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Neoliberalism partly explains why the USA has become so unequal over the course of this party system. As a result, the US increasingly divided politically. The economy has more influence than anything else upon political opinions, so neoliberalism is the most important component of America's political polarization.
neoliberal characteristics:
- emphasis of individuality and rejection of groups
- market liberalism and fiscal conservatism (which are kinda the same thing)
- privatization of public goods and infrastructure
- deregulating any corporations
- austerity measures against welfare
- free trade agreements which allow for more rapid globalization
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Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s during the Carter administration, with deregulation of the trucking, banking and airline industries,as well as the appointment of Paul Volcker to chairman of the Federal Reserve. This trend continued into the 1980s under the Reagan administration, which included tax cuts, increased defense spending, financial deregulation and trade deficit expansion. Likewise, concepts of supply-side economics, discussed by the Democrats in the 1970s, culminated in the 1980 Joint Economic Committee report "Plugging in the Supply Side". This was picked up and advanced by the Reagan administration, with Congress following Reagan's basic proposal and cutting federal income taxes across the board by 25% in 1981.
During the 1990s, the Clinton administration also embraced neoliberalism by supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), continuing the deregulation of the financial sector through passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act and implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The neoliberalism of the Clinton administration differs from that of Reagan as the Clinton administration purged neoliberalism of neoconservative positions on militarism, family values, opposition to multiculturalism and neglect of ecological issues.
1:35 - US political polarization playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... .
10:25 - Race Riots: https://youtu.be/tAbkCU5nBhM .
10:30 - Detroit: https://youtu.be/-aWoe17Fa0k .
14:30 - WILSOOOON! playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... .
14:40 - police militarization: https://youtu.be/HehnDHNoItk .
19:30 - anti-conspiracism playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... .
24:00 - what caused the GWOT: https://youtu.be/7Nwe0ehW2nY .
35:35 - Party Switch: https://youtu.be/hBHHIJG8Rds .
While a number of recent histories of neoliberalism in the United States have traced its origins back to the urban renewal policies of the 1950s, Marxist economic geographer David Harvey argues the rise of neoliberal policies in the United States occurred during the 1970s energy crisis, and traces the origin of its political rise to Lewis Powell's 1971 confidential memorandum to the Chamber of Commerce in particular. A call to arms to the business community to counter criticism of the free enterprise system, it was a significant factor in the rise of conservative and libertarian organizations and think-tanks which advocated for neoliberal policies, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academia and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. For Powell, universities were becoming an ideological battleground, and he recommended the establishment of an intellectual infrastructure to serve as a counterweight to the increasingly popular ideas of Ralph Nader and other opponents of big business. The original neoliberals on the left included, among others, Michael Kinsley, Charles Peters, James Fallows, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, and Paul Tsongas. Sometimes called “Atari Democrats,” these were the men — and they were almost all men — who helped to remake American liberalism into neoliberalism, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. These new liberals would recoil in horror at the policies and programs of mid-century liberals like Walter Reuther or John Kenneth Galbraith or even Arthur Schlesinger.Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s during the Carter administration, with deregulation of the trucking, banking and airline industries,as well as the appointment of Paul Volcker to chairman of the Federal Reserve. This trend continued into the 1980s under the Reagan administration, which included tax cuts, increased defense spending, financial deregulation and trade deficit expansion. Likewise, concepts of supply-side economics, discussed by the Democrats in the 1970s, culminated in the 1980 Joint Economic Committee report "Plugging in the Supply Side". This was picked up and advanced by the Reagan administration, with Congress following Reagan's basic proposal and cutting federal income taxes across the board by 25% in 1981.
During the 1990s, the Clinton administration also embraced neoliberalism by supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), continuing the deregulation of the financial sector through passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act and implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The neoliberalism of the Clinton administration differs from that of Reagan as the Clinton administration purged neoliberalism of neoconservative positions on militarism, family values, opposition to multiculturalism and neglect of ecological issues.
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During her tenure as UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher oversaw a number of neoliberal reforms, including tax reduction, exchange rate reform, deregulation, and privatisation. These reforms were continued and supported by her successor John Major. Although opposed by the Labour Party, the reforms were, according to some scholars, largely left unaltered when Labour returned to power in 1997.The Adam Smith Institute, a United Kingdom-based free-market think tank and lobbying group formed in 1977 which was a major driver of the aforementioned neoliberal reforms, officially changed its libertarian label to neoliberal in October 2016.
According to economists Denzau and Roy, the "shift from Keynesian ideas toward neoliberalism influenced the fiscal policy strategies of New Democrats and New Labour in both the White House and Whitehall....Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, and Blair all adopted broadly similar neoliberal beliefs."
...
Writing in New York, journalist Jonathan Chait disputed accusations that the Democratic Party had been hijacked by neoliberals, saying that its policies have largely stayed the same since the New Deal. Instead, Chait suggested these accusations arose from arguments that presented a false dichotomy between free-market economics and socialism, ignoring mixed economies. American feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser says the modern Democratic Party has embraced a "progressive neoliberalism," which she describes as a "progressive-neoliberal alliance of financialization plus emancipation". Historian Walter Scheidel says that both parties shifted to promote free-market capitalism in the 1970s, with the Democratic Party being "instrumental in implementing financial deregulation in the 1990s". Historians Andrew Diamond and Thomas Sugrue argue that neoliberalism became a "'dominant rationality' precisely because it could not be confined to a single partisan identity." Economic and political inequalities in schools, universities, and libraries and an undermining of democratic and civil society institutions influenced by neoliberalism has been explored by Buschman.
English speakers have used the term neoliberalism since the start of the 20th century with different meanings, but it became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s, used by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences as well as by critics. The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies. Some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people as neoliberalism has "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world. Neoliberalism shares many attributes with other concepts that have contested meanings, including representative democracy.
The definition and usage of the term have changed over time. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s as they attempted to revive and renew central ideas from classical liberalism as they saw these ideas diminish in popularity, overtaken by a desire to control markets, following the Great Depression and manifested in policies designed to counter the volatility of free markets, and mitigate their negative social consequences. One impetus for the formulation of policies to mitigate free-market volatility was a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, failures sometimes attributed principally to the economic policy of classical liberalism.
When the term entered into common use in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, it quickly took on negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of Mont Pelerin Society economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan. Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and with the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has grown over the last few decades.
Beltway libertarianism .
Capitalism .
Classical liberalism .
Conservatism in the United States .
Cultural globalization .
Economic globalization .
Economic liberalism .
Elite theory .
Free market .
Globalism .
Globalization .
History of macroeconomic thought .
Inverted totalitarianism .
Late capitalism .
Neoclassical economics .
Neoclassical liberalism .
Neoconservatism .
Neo-libertarianism .
Objectivism .
Political Economy .
Reagan Democrat .
Reaganomics .
Reason magazine .
Right libertarianism .
Shock therapy (economics) .
Thatcherism .
Triangulation .
Trickle-down economics .
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