What we talk about when we talk about neoliberalism

The basic principle of neoliberalism was perhaps best described by journalist George Monbiot, who defines neoliberalism as the idea:

that competition is the defining feature of human life, and that we are fundamentally selfish and greedy, that these are good things because our selfishness and greed can be harnessed to make us all richer, that society should really be governed by buying and selling, and our interactions should more or less be reduced to commercial interactions.”

Neoliberal economics takes that borderline sociopathic philosophy and builds it into a point of view that assumes what’s good for the ultra-rich is good for the economy — so it’s good for everyone. In the neoliberal worldview, the inverse is also true: higher wages and other things that are good for working people are bad for the economy, so they’re actually bad for everyone.

Neoliberalism is internally consistent, offering up endless theories, equations and graphs that model a world where completely rational human beings who experience no power imbalances make completely logical and perfectly selfish and self-maximizing decisions about how to spend money and allocate resources. In the real world, American dollars are printed with the words “In God We Trust”; in the cult of neoliberalism, the gods decree “In Money We Trust”

In the world of neoliberalism, private unregulated markets are always right, government is always wrong, growing profits is the greatest virtue of all, and higher wages are a threat to everything that is good and holy. Basic ideas like “supply and demand” and “return on investment” are transformed from useful economic concepts into articles of religious faith which cannot be questioned without opening the gates of hell.

There is no empirical economic evidence supporting these beliefs.

Neoliberalism assumes that competition in markets is perfect, but anyone who experienced the greedflation of the past few years knows that’s simply not true.

Neoliberalism assumes that a worker’s wages perfectly reflect their economic contributions, but anyone with a job knows that’s not how their pay gets set.

And neoliberalism assumes that corporate profits are always deserved and also the measure of our collective economic success, but anyone who’s been to a grocery store can see that corporate concentration and monopoly power play a role too.

For 50 years, the cult of neoliberalism has had an extraordinary impact on US political and economic policymakers from both parties. And we’ve seen the results in skyrocketing inequality and a diminished sense of what government can do.

But its time has passed.

Neoliberalism must die.