Bloomberg: Middle-class Americans were "fleeced" by neoliberalism

[anon50609448]

@DukeTrout

Rather the opposite of Keynes, as Keynesian economics called for raising taxes and public investment during economic downturn. And, hey, after 50 years of Keynesian public economic policy working quite well, let’s try something else. What could go wrong?

Well, Keynes also called for laying off the public investment and paying down debt when the economy was doing well again. People are only Keynesian during recessions. I think

@Raoul

It’s confusing because the US uses “liberal” in a completely different way to the rest of the world and to academic political scientists and historians.

In most other countries the liberal party is the centre-right party with conservatives on the right and labour/labor on the left with social democrats as center-left.

Yeah, in Europe a “liberal” is economically liberal (deregulation), while in the US and Canada a “liberal” is socially liberal (not judging people for who they are or their lifestyles). In the US it was called neoconservatism instead of neoliberalism. I’m sure someone will tell me that’s not the same thing. For one thing I don’t think european neoliberals had the love of foreign wars that US neocons do. But I think there is a western zeitgeist that is its own thing whatever we call it. Thatcher, Reagan, Obama and European technocrats imposing austerity are all part of the same big tide, whatever we call that tide.

@lolipop_jones

Of course, if we somehow prohibit the purchase of that cheaply made $9.99 Chinese toaster, there is nothing to stop some stateside company from using the exact same schematics and materials to produce an “AMERICAN MADE!!” toaster and sell it for $24.99.

I think there may be a number of things stopping that. Some of the cheaper price of things made in China may be the result of labour laws that don’t do as good a job of protecting worker safety. I’m certainly not an expert on worker safety laws in China or the US, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here. There may also be different environmental laws that let companies dump byproducts. I found an OECD document from 2010 that estimate the statistical value of human life in china at about one thirteenth of that in the US. Some substantial part of the lowered cost is the higher disposability of the human beings involved.

That sort of doesn’t get to your central point - that America make crap just as crappy as the crap from China. Do any of those regulations that would prevent them from using the same process mean they would have to create a better product? I’m not sure. I can’t make a straight line connection between the two things in my head, but I think it’s worth considering whether there isn’t some broad impact of valuing people more that makes its way into processes.