For me the biggest scam is the difference now between borrowing rates and interest paying rates.
In the 1990s and early 2000s I could get 5% on a savings account and was paying ~10% on a secured loan and ~20% on a credit card. Now I get 0.01% on savings account (i.e. it loses value every day) and my credit cards are 15-30% (with an 800+ credit score). Same in the UK where you can get 2% on savings, but credit cards for average users are 30%+ apr.
Mortgages have been somewhat insulated from the scam but student loans are a horrible deal - they are essentially risk free for the lenders but still charge 4-8% Given the complete lack of risk they should be 0.5% or less
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?
Them that’s got shall get
Them that’s not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that’s got his own
[quote=“caze, post:81, topic:104052, full:true”] She certainly wasn’t a loon either, she saved the country from bankruptcy and the potential takeover by militant leftists who were keen to align the country with the Soviet Union (this was a very real threat at the time). She wasn’t perfect (e.g. the poll tax, milk thievery, and while monetarism worked initially she didn’t react quickly enough to its failings), but broadly speaking had a net positive impact on the UK.
[/quote]
You what? Did you actually live through the Thatcher Dictatorship? Between her & Raygunn things took a pretty bad turn back then. It took several hundred years for things to get back to sensible. Oh, wait, spoilers. Ignore this.
I’m confused with nomenclature, because neoliberalism has nothing to do with liberalism, and seems to have a lot to do with severe libertarian-style conservatism. (However on the Fox-like talk shows, they’ll often talk disparagingly about neoliberalism as if its the next liberal-word that they need to demonize.)
No, the link text is different than the article title… @doctorow has been doing that lately and it is usually quite amusing. “dont-get-fooled-again.html” is the URL/Link for the main site but not the title on the post.
The problem isn’t in the term “liberal”, the problem is the idiosyncratic American usage of “liberal” as a euphemism for “left”. Elsewhere in the world, “liberal” has always been associated with laissez-faire capitalism.
Well since the term conservatism predates neoliberalism, it seems to me more like conservatism is the old wine and “neoliberalism” is the label on the new bottles people are trying to pour it into.
Yes, really. I don’t understand why you are arguing against this.
This article is referring to American policy. The term “conservatism” in the US means financial deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and a lax attitude towards consumer protection and antitrusts.
This meaning for “Conservatism” predates the creation of the term “neoliberalism”. As far as I can see, other potential meanings in other contexts don’t affect this.
Very many of those “lost jobs” (be it to foreign workers or countries) were lost because consumers could not afford (or would not pay for) goods at a rate that could sustain a properly paid workforce. Non-fair-trade goods (and the masses demand for them) created the situation you describe.
The problem now is that those same masses now have less disposable income and cannot afford to pay fair trade rates for goods. You can demand people “buy American”, but that doesn’t work if they can’t afford to.
IMHO, at this point society needs to be weaned off of cheap, disposable non-fair-trade goods while simultaneously subsidizing low-income families to purchase local. Only then can we expect jobs to return at fair wages that people can afford to work for.
I’ll gladly contribute $20 to the charity of your choice if you can point me to anyone clearly identified as libertarian who supported the 2008 bank bailout.
