It's EITHER/OR

[J842P]

See my edit. Not all Neoliberals are Republicans. Although, it may be the case that all Republicans are Neoliberal. But the "New Democrats" are essentially Neoliberals, and in fact, they are pretty much Neoconservatives too.

If you must understand it in the context of the US, you can think of Neoliberalism as a rejection/reaction to the New Deal and the post-war Keynesian period.

Ok, I will consider both terms rendered meaningless.

What? Why?

 

[Elixir]

Ok, I will consider both terms rendered meaningless.

What? Why?

Because I have little or no use for them. I already have words for those who favor cutting taxes on the rich and letting corporations have their way. Sure, "neo-liberal" sounds fancier than "asshole", but...

 

[J842P]

Here's a more complete synopsis, from wikipedia:



But as with Jimmy, I cannot tell if you are being sarcastic, or you actually are unfamiliar with the term.

Thanks. I am/was actually unfamiliar with the term. I've heard it used but not in a context that gave it any meaning beyond "bad guy".
Sounds like libertarianism though... there are probably finer points that set it apart, but frankly the difference between dog shit and coyote shit is of more interest to me (I need to know when the coyotes are encroaching on my territory en masse).

Well, Libertarianism is a big group of ideas. What you think of as a Libertarian in the US - a far rightwing ideology - is not actually representative of all libertarian thought. Suffice it to say, libertarianism was actually a leftist ideology for much of it's history.

But ideologies are often defined by their historical origins, not necessarily the content of the ideas. Neoliberalism refers to a specific set of ideas that came about at a specific time, in response to another specific set of ideas that arose in a specific time. But essentially, Neoliberalism has characterized all the administrations starting with Nixon.

 

[Elixir]

Thanks. I am/was actually unfamiliar with the term. I've heard it used but not in a context that gave it any meaning beyond "bad guy".
Sounds like libertarianism though... there are probably finer points that set it apart, but frankly the difference between dog shit and coyote shit is of more interest to me (I need to know when the coyotes are encroaching on my territory en masse).

Well, Libertarianism is a big group of ideas. What you think of as a Libertarian in the US - a far rightwing ideology - is not actually representative of all libertarian thought. Suffice it to say, libertarianism was actually a leftist ideology for much of it's history.

But ideologies are often defined by their historical origins, not necessarily the content of the ideas. Neoliberalism refers to a specific set of ideas that came about at a specific time, in response to another specific set of ideas that arose in a specific time. But essentially, Neoliberalism has characterized all the administrations starting with Nixon.

Even Carter? That's a ... broad tent indeed!

 

[J842P]

What? Why?

Because I have little or no use for them. I already have words for those who favor cutting taxes on the rich and letting corporations have their way. Sure, "neo-liberal" sounds fancier than "asshole", but...

Jesus dude. You really need to go back and re-read 1984.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, Libertarianism is a big group of ideas. What you think of as a Libertarian in the US - a far rightwing ideology - is not actually representative of all libertarian thought. Suffice it to say, libertarianism was actually a leftist ideology for much of it's history.

But ideologies are often defined by their historical origins, not necessarily the content of the ideas. Neoliberalism refers to a specific set of ideas that came about at a specific time, in response to another specific set of ideas that arose in a specific time. But essentially, Neoliberalism has characterized all the administrations starting with Nixon.

Even Carter? That's a ... broad tent indeed!

See, this is exactly what I mean. You think that is a broad tent. But Carter/Clinton are more far removed from, say, Eisenhower (who would probably be called a socialist by today's Republicans) than they are from George Bush. Not to mention Roosevelt.

This is the problem when your vocabulary is limited to "people who I don't like are assholes".

Take another example. The ACA, which is suppose to be "progressive", or as the Republicans call it, "Socialist". But the core ideas of the plan are fundamentally neoliberal. It was based on a Heritage Foundation plan for fuck's sake.

 

[J842P]

To be fair, it might be unfair to characterize Carter and even Nixon as neoliberal. They were both from a generation firmly rooted in the New Deal. But definitely, you saw the beginnings of it by Carter.

 

[SimpleDon]

It's EITHER/OR

I see that I really have to polish my series on neoliberalism.

Neoliberals have nothing to do with the liberal portion of the political spectrum in the US. In fact, they are strongly opposed to US liberals. US liberals are called "Labor" or "social democrats" in most other countries. "Liberals" are to right in most countries other than the US and they, as has been already pointed out, are opposed to the features of social democracy such as welfare, Medicare and Social Security.

Neoliberalism was founded as an academic economic school by two Austrian economists in 1936 as a competing school of economics to Keynesian economics. Austrian and the more mainstream neoclassical economics both took a serve beating for their inability to predict and to explain the Great Depression. They went back to the economics of the classical liberals, a political movement in England in the 1830's. The classical liberal empathized economic as well as personal freedoms, free markets and free trade, a true labor market where wages are allowed to both rise and to fall and a strict gold standard for money. In England they stopped open welfare, that is they reopened the poor houses and the debtors prisons.

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, you are right. It is the very basis of our current political economics, if not yet the whole of our academic economics. It is is behind supply side economics, the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves, the theory of austerity as a way out of a recession, that the government should spend less to restore confidence in a recession that is pretty much by definition when everyone else is reducing their spending. It is nothing but warmed over Austrian/Libertarian economics, the fantasy of the self-organizing, self-regulating free market.

It is shit economics, a free market regulated by supply and demand setting prices down to cost of production of the marginal product, an economy that is supply constrained, where demand is desire and infinite and therefore isn't a factor in the exchange of goods, where wise investors coming together in an open, free stock market collectively decide which companies are winners and worthy of investment and which are losers and are starved of capital, in a word Econ 101.

In the world of ideas neoliberalism gained little against Keynesian economics until, largely through the efforts of the economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, neoliberalism was brought to the attention of who were the neoliberals natural allies, the very wealthy of primarily, at least in the beginning, the US. Reference the Mont Pèlerin Society.

What neoliberalism lacked in support from historical precedent, in theoretical support and in applicability to the real world economy it more than made up for in the raw power of the money behind it. Because it is the wealthy who endow university teaching and research chairs and it is the wealthy who hire the university's graduate economists, slowly and largely unnoticed academic economics was pushed aside by this wealth friendly caricature of economics.

It has dominated our political economics, the economics that we base our economic policies on, since the late 1970's. It is reasonable to blame the problems that we have had since then on neoliberalism, problems such as the ever growing deficit and the Great Financial Crisis and Recession, since its supply side economics depends on tax cuts for the rich and the GFC&R was caused by banks using their newly granted ability, in the name of deregulation, to engage in reckless speculation with depositors money, as they have always done given the chance all through history. And yet, as I am writing this the neoliberal party in Congress is working to destroy the rather tepid Dodd-Frank reforms passed into law after the GFC&R, all in the name of deregulation and helping banks to make more loans. Because some perfectly reliable real estate developers now have problems getting loans, I suppose.

While liberals have been fighting the racism, homophobic, misogynous, all cultures are equal and gun control wars and conservatives have been defending those as personal prerogatives to be assholes in the interests of fighting social and cultural change, while battling among other horrors the war against Christmas and the scourge of flag burning. While so occupied both liberals and conservatives have suffered repeated defeats in a war that they didn't even realize was being waged on them, which they lost without even putting up a fight. This is it, the class war being waged by the wealthy to get all of the money. This is neoliberalism.

=================================================​

The solution to the problem of constant wars can be easily solved. Just re-institute the draft, except this time draft the sons and daughters of the wealthy first. Call it the noblesse obliges draft.

 

[LordKiran]

It's EITHER/OR

I see that I really have to polish my series on neoliberalism.

Neoliberals have nothing to do with the liberal portion of the political spectrum in the US. In fact, they are strongly opposed to US liberals. US liberals are called "Labor" or "social democrats" in most other countries. "Liberals" are to right in most countries other than the US and they, as has been already pointed out, are opposed to the features of social democracy such as welfare, Medicare and Social Security.

Neoliberalism was founded as an academic economic school by two Austrian economists in 1936 as a competing school of economics to Keynesian economics. Austrian and the more mainstream neoclassical economics both took a serve beating for their inability to predict and to explain the Great Depression. They went back to the economics of the classical liberals, a political movement in England in the 1830's. The classical liberal empathized economic as well as personal freedoms, free markets and free trade, a true labor market where wages are allowed to both rise and to fall and a strict gold standard for money. In England they stopped open welfare, that is they reopened the poor houses and the debtors prisons.

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, you are right. It is the very basis of our current political economics, if not yet the whole of our academic economics. It is is behind supply side economics, the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves, the theory of austerity as a way out of a recession, that the government should spend less to restore confidence in a recession that is pretty much by definition when everyone else is reducing their spending. It is nothing but warmed over Austrian/Libertarian economics, the fantasy of the self-organizing, self-regulating free market.

It is shit economics, a free market regulated by supply and demand setting prices down to cost of production of the marginal product, an economy that is supply constrained, where demand is desire and infinite and therefore isn't a factor in the exchange of goods, where wise investors coming together in an open, free stock market collectively decide which companies are winners and worthy of investment and which are losers and are starved of capital, in a word Econ 101.

In the world of ideas neoliberalism gained little against Keynesian economics until, largely through the efforts of the economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, neoliberalism was brought to the attention of who were the neoliberals natural allies, the very wealthy of primarily, at least in the beginning, the US. Reference the Mont Pèlerin Society.

What neoliberalism lacked in support from historical precedent, in theoretical support and in applicability to the real world economy it more than made up for in the raw power of the money behind it. Because it is the wealthy who endow university teaching and research chairs and it is the wealthy who hire the university's graduate economists, slowly and largely unnoticed academic economics was pushed aside by this wealth friendly caricature of economics.

It has dominated our political economics, the economics that we base our economic policies on, since the late 1970's. It is reasonable to blame the problems that we have had since then on neoliberalism, problems such as the ever growing deficit and the Great Financial Crisis and Recession, since its supply side economics depends on tax cuts for the rich and the GFC&R was caused by banks using their newly granted ability, in the name of deregulation, to engage in reckless speculation with depositors money, as they have always done given the chance all through history. And yet, as I am writing this the neoliberal party in Congress is working to destroy the rather tepid Dodd-Frank reforms passed into law after the GFC&R, all in the name of deregulation and helping banks to make more loans. Because some perfectly reliable real estate developers now have problems getting loans, I suppose.

While liberals have been fighting the racism, homophobic, misogynous, all cultures are equal and gun control wars and conservatives have been defending those as personal prerogatives to be assholes in the interests of fighting social and cultural change, while battling among other horrors the war against Christmas and the scourge of flag burning. While so occupied both liberals and conservatives have suffered repeated defeats in a war that they didn't even realize was being waged on them, which they lost without even putting up a fight. This is it, the class war being waged by the wealthy to get all of the money. This is neoliberalism.

=================================================​

The solution to the problem of constant wars can be easily solved. Just re-institute the draft, except this time draft the sons and daughters of the wealthy first. Call it the noblesse obliges draft.

You know the funny thing about your solution is that by the time you find and elect people who'd want to even do something that obviously spiteful and unjust to the upper class of our society on some moralistic principle in the first place, they'd be in power and would no longer need to since there would be no substantive support base for the wealthy people to then appeal to act on their behalf to then direct our war policy to get the supposed law removed by the people they requested to direct their warpolicy.

You see where the redundancy in that inebriated post lies?

 

[Cobalt]

The solution to the problem of constant wars can be easily solved. Just re-institute the draft, except this time draft the sons and daughters of the wealthy first. Call it the noblesse obliges draft.

Go back and look at the OP. That's what the drones are for.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Color me cognitively impaired, I guess. (Wouldn't be the first time...)

WTF is neo-liberalism as Akirk and J842P refer to it? Are they both talking about the same thing?
The quick def. I looked up just said "a modified form of liberalism tending to favor free-market capitalism."

It doesn't say what free market capitalism is favored over, or what the attributes of the "favoritism" referenced in the definition might be.

I tend to favor free market capitalism over, say, whatever you call what's going on in Venezuela... am I a neo-liberal?

Damn. I hope I'm not a neo-liberal; they sound like dreadful people!

Neo-Liberalism is modern day worship of what are called "free" markets, actually rigged markets.

It's economic philosophy is to lower taxes on the rich and watch the magic. Unfortunately what we get are bubbles and huge collapses, again and again, not magic.

Exactly. Then move factories to countries where wages are less so profits are increased, though actually this is just a part of the running costs. As for the countries where the factories are moved from, wages go down or we get zero rated contracts.

This is what happens in the EU where a company can even get a free grant to move his works in this way.

 

[arkirk]

Why do you like murdering people you don't know who have done nothing to you?

Yeah, that's what he said. Nice job of reading for comprehension.

Would not the money be better spent on education and social security as Akirk suggested in the Opening Post

Is that how they do things in Russia?

Anyway, it seems that ones needs to be seriously confused to make an argument that drones are more costly than human crewed jets.

Cobalt: You just don't seem to get it that WAR IS NOT THE WAY TO EXTEND HUMAN LIFE ON THIS EARTH. You are just a jingoistic character without too much sense of what is of value in the world and in life itself. I have engaged in all sorts of arguments about violence here and it seems some of us...namely you for one...just have no sense of human rights or justice. To my way of seeing things, that is a terrible lacking and it seems also to be an addictive one as well. Perhaps you should ask why would you want to be killing people in countries that have not attacked your country. You seem terrified of the notion that others can live in distant places and not pay homage to the United States. No homage is due. Wake up and realize we have to share this world without more than 7 billion other human beings. You really can't be imagining that any nation or people can survive indefinitely if it is always at war do you? You and your kind of thinking has no room for cooperation either on the home front (social programs) or on the international front (diplomacy, treaties, and meeting environmental obligations). Your addiction to killing and thinking that leads to constant conflict is a major part of the problem. I would about bet you voted for the Orange Terror.

 

[arkirk]

Ok, I will consider both terms rendered meaningless.

What? Why?

j842p: I agree with you on this issue. The American mainstream press has mangled internationally agreed upon terms and most Americans feel like Elixer that the words are meaningless when they actually are not. A good example is Libertarian...an American Libertarian subscribes to the notion of an absolute dictatorship of those with all the money. That clearly is not the definition of liberty. The term libertarian has other meanings outside the United States. Chomsky recently gave a talk on that.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Cobalt: You just don't seem to get it that WAR IS NOT THE WAY TO EXTEND HUMAN LIFE ON THIS EARTH.

Excuse me, please, akirk, but has ANYONE stated that it is? Because i don't see where anyone has. Or even half of the shit you attribute to him....?
You're projecting a lot onto Cobalt, most of it apparently from your fantasies...

 

[arkirk]

Yes, thanks, but you said our country IS losing its leadership under neoliberal leadership. Not WAS.

Neoliberal is PRETEND LIBERAL.

Yeah, got that. That wasn't the part i needed explained, thanks.
I wanted to know who you're talking about today.

Like the Clintons...war mongers and denier of all the things our society lacks but should have. This Drone thing is just on of a whole list of economic crimes being perpetrated by Neoliberals against the working class in Amerika.

Being perpetrated you say?

By who?

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, military suppliers and manufacturers, contractors, munitions makers, generals angling for a cushy job when they retire, By who? The list is much longer than this, but it should start you looking in the right direction. There are whole businesses who rely on wars continuing and possibly growning to keep their doors open and to keep the profits flowing in. The U.S. is in a resource war just about everywhere in the world with over 900 bases on foreign soil. These wars only feed the war industry and it aims by any means possible to keep them going.

Corporations are neo-liberals?
I'll believe that when the neo-cons start shutting them down.

This remark shows how little you know , Elixer. NeoCons love the war profits. Iraq's invasion was a neo-con project with plenty of opportunity for neoliberal profit taking. Something for nothing always has an allure to people without consciences.

 

[arkirk]

Cobalt: You just don't seem to get it that WAR IS NOT THE WAY TO EXTEND HUMAN LIFE ON THIS EARTH.

Excuse me, please, akirk, but has ANYONE stated that it is? Because i don't see where anyone has. Or even half of the shit you attribute to him....?
You're projecting a lot onto Cobalt, most of it apparently from your fantasies...

If you look to proposed solutions you will see that nobody says "War is the way." What they say instead is that this or that can be brought under control by military means." Cobalt has always leaned that way.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yes, thanks, but you said our country IS losing its leadership under neoliberal leadership. Not WAS.

Neoliberal is PRETEND LIBERAL.

Yeah, got that. That wasn't the part i needed explained, thanks.
I wanted to know who you're talking about today.

Like the Clintons...war mongers and denier of all the things our society lacks but should have. This Drone thing is just on of a whole list of economic crimes being perpetrated by Neoliberals against the working class in Amerika.

Being perpetrated you say?

By who?

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, military suppliers and manufacturers, contractors, munitions makers, generals angling for a cushy job when they retire, By who? The list is much longer than this, but it should start you looking in the right direction. There are whole businesses who rely on wars continuing and possibly growning to keep their doors open and to keep the profits flowing in. The U.S. is in a resource war just about everywhere in the world with over 900 bases on foreign soil. These wars only feed the war industry and it aims by any means possible to keep them going.

Corporations are neo-liberals?
I'll believe that when the neo-cons start shutting them down.

My understanding has been that neoliberalism is an ECONOMIC school that pushes "liberal economic" theories like deregulation and private ownership of everything (like the libertarians, only they see the government's role as a servant of business interests, not a hindrance to it). Neoconservatives are a political movement defined by jingoism, militarism and the assumption of "negative reinforcement" as the starting point of all forms of diplomacy or political progress, meaning all desired behaviors can be brought about through threats, punishment, deterrence or or intimidation.

The two terms are often confused because neoliberals and neoconservatives are SOMETIMES the same people, and that while the two groups were closely aligned during the Bush years, they're not necessarily the same.