Neoliberal Economics Are the Reason

 the world is on the brink of climate and environmental collapse.  It isn't rocket science to figure out why the planet is on the brink of ruin.

Trace it back to the crackpot economic theories of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.  Con politicians to outsource tens of millions of industrial jobs in America with ruinous trade agreements, starting with the Reagan administration, and move them to low wage countries like India and China, with HUGE populations and few or no regulations, and you have the perfect recipe for outrageous corporate profits and ultimately the ruination of the planet.

Roughly 36 percent of the world's population lives in one of the two countries, and Asia has 60 percent of the world's population.  Most of this continent's countries have few regulations on how businesses operate and too many people, and this is the disaster everybody needs to face.  Pre-Friedman, these countries were heavily agriculturally based; now much of the continent is industrialized, but with no environmental regulations or few, the air, the water, the everything have turned to shit.

The one good thing about the COVID pandemic in the early going was that the air was so much better all over the world.  When countries shut down, the planet was able to breathe.  Now that COVID is gradually coming under control, the environment is going to shit again, and we may not have that long left as a world.

The billionaires think they can take their ill-gotten money and go to other planets, but they are in for a rude awakening.

Not hard to figure out, folks, why we have a disaster on our hands.  Forty years of neoliberalism have fucked over the planet and ultimately the human race.

If Friedman hadn't been cremated and scattered after he died, I would piss on his grave.

Neolibs Are NOT Democrats

They are neolibs or "libertarians."

When you go around and criticize traditional Democratic constituencies for daring to stand up for the rights of workers over the desires of corporations, you cannot call yourself a "Democrat."

TPP is the final nail in the coffin for what used to be called the "American Dream."

Cultists Don't Care About Facts

They don't care about this country, the American people, or anything this country holds dear including public institutions. Everything is to be subject to looting by the elites, including education. The way to do it is to con the public these institutions are failing, therefore making them ripe for the picking.

These criminals peddling this neoliberal ideology, an ideology infesting both political parties, don't care if their ideas are full of shit. What's important is to destroy the institutions by any means possible.

Truthfully, they need to belong in jail, not in positions of power.

They are nothing more than gangsters.

Why Bother With Elections At All?

It's increasingly obvious the two major parties are nothing but tools of the bankers, billionaires, and neoliberals in their insane quest to turn the United States into a third world country, so any complaint about the "inconvenience" of midterm elections rings hollow.

Schanzer, the anti-terror and homeland security expert, wants an imperial presidency that is not impeded in pursuing its agenda by expensive diversions and distractions such as congressional elections. The character of the agenda Schanzer supports is indicated by his claim that “This adjustment would also give Congress the breathing space to consider longer-term challenges facing the nation—such as entitlement spending…”

Without elections every other year, the president and Congress could get down to the business of gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—programs upon which tens of millions of workers depend to keep them out of poverty. The American ruling class needs a strong, authoritarian state to carry through its social counterrevolution against the opposition of the working class. This is the real content of Schanzer’s “modest proposal.”

The NYT piece is nothing but neoliberal evil.

These neolibs don't even hide their contempt for our country anymore.

It Won't Stop

until the billionaires and Wall Street crooks suck out the last dime from the middle class, the poor, and generally everybody else who is not in the Fortune/Forbes 400.

It won't stop until we have politicians in D.C. and in the states who are NOT in bed with the interests out to destroy the United States and its institutions.

This radical agenda is GLOBAL and involves ALL of the public and private sector, and the war on education cannot be separated from the larger picture.

That's neoliberalism in a nutshell.

Bill's Bedroom Stories

Bill Clinton's longrunning affair with neoliberalism began even before he was elected president in 1992. It began with the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council, founded by a group of southern Democrats and those with business interests trying to help get the Democratic Party become a national party again after the 1988 Dukakis defeat. It seemed sincere at first, but it didn't take all that long for the DLC to become wholeheartedly an imitation of the GOP on economic issues. It basically destroyed Democratic Party opposition to the worst impulses of the GOP to tank the economy. They were simply a "me too" party. As a result of 25 years of neolib infiltration, there are no significant policy differences between the two parties anymore.

Today there is no DLC but an outfit called "Third Way" which is devoted to furthering the aims of the billionaire/Wall Street/neoliberal class in destroying the country to benefit themselves.

Despite all of the evidence that neoliberalism has been discredited and debunked, Clinton is still going around the country peddling the gospel of "globalism" and other such rot.

It could have all been prevented, of course, had the Democrats booted the fakers out of the party and forced Clinton to behave like a Democrat. Instead, what we got was Clinton being behind the destruction of AFDC, which was insanity, only to preserve his re-election chances by out-GOPing the GOP. It was disgraceful. But he's a neoliberal, remember? He didn't have to sign on for NAFTA or for Glass-Steagall repeal--he could have taken a stand. He refused. He's a neoliberal, remember?

Those destructive policies were embraced because Clinton was in bed with interests bent on killing the economy for their own ends. He was completely and totally in bed with then-fed chairman Alan Greenspan and the Wall Street bankster and then-secretary of the treasury Robert Rubin, whose appointment to the Treasury was like appointing Al Capone to the job. People who make excuses for him are trying to argue along a party line argument when in fact both political parties are at fault.

People at the time were focused on silly "sex scandals" than on the people Clinton was truly in bed with.

Such selling out of the American people is worse when Democrats do it because their interests are supposed to be aligned with the interests of the 99.99-percent of the public. If they subvert the interests of us non-elites, where do we have to go?

This is the crux of the linked interview:

The grand historical significance of the Clinton Administration, and of the DLC to a lesser degree, is that they are what cemented the neoliberal era. It’s that air of complete, ironclad consensus about matters economic. That sense that, there is only one way to run an economy and we know what it is. So you can have Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher making the big turn toward laissez-faire, but it’s not really “neoliberalism” until the other party capitulates, until you have the famous handshake between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, and until you have Clinton announcing “the era of big government is over.” In the 1990s they called this the “Washington Consensus,” but today we hip and cognizant people know to call it “neoliberalism.”

That's because political "leaders" embraced the economic theories of a Nobel Prize-winning crackpot by the name of Milton Friedman.

The day Bill Clinton repudiates his "welfare reform," approval of ruinous trade deals, and the repeal of banking industry regulations is the day I will hold him in any kind of high esteem.

As it is, thanks for nothing, Bill.

Stating the Obvious

You'd have to be living in a cave or be a complete tool or idiot to think what is happening in this country economically is anything other than intentional.

The neoliberal poison began with Reagan and has been continued by politicians in both political parties ever since. It's going to take a miracle to undo this mess now that the rich have way too much money and way too much power. Congress of course could repeal the last thirty years of tax policies, trade agreements, and economic policies that have screwed the rest of us over, but there is NO political will to do it.

People have GOT to realize there are NO meaningful differences between the two parties anymore. Most are still adhering to outdated ideas regarding left-right, conservative-liberal, Democrat-Republican when in reality there is just the tiny few against the rest of us.


Note: This interview is two years ago, but of course things are even worse now.

Evil As Hell

Education is front and center in the insane move to privatize everything.

Neoliberlism is the most evil idea that has ever come down the pike, yet our "elected" officials seem hellbent on destroying the United States to enrich the few.

The apathy of the masses is going to make this shit a reality if people don't wake up:

Right-wing appeals to austerity provide the rationale for slash-and-burn policies intended to deprive government-financed social and educational programs of the funds needed to enable them to work, if not survive. Along with health care, public transportation, Medicare, food stamp programs for low-income children, and a host of other social protections, higher education is being defunded as part of a larger scheme to dismantle and privatize all public services, goods and spheres. The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interests over the common good. The educational goal of expanding the capacity for critical thought and the outer limits of the imagination have given way to the instrumental desert of a mind-deadening audit culture. But there is more at work here than the march toward privatization and the never-ending search for profits at any cost; there is also the issue of wasteful spending on a bloated war machine, the refusal to tax fairly the rich and corporations, the draining of public funds for the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ongoing consolidation of class power in the hands of the 1 percent.

Probably not even the one percent. It's more like the top one percent of the top one percent.

The American People Are Being Played Like a Stradivarius

I just about blew a gasket when I read this. You find this sideshow crap going on all over the country.

When I see stupid "issues" like these being bandied about, I am asking myself what ELSE are the elites trying to pull in D.C. and in the state legislatures?

These are completely unimportant "issues" that are designed to distract the masses from what is REALLY going on, and that is the complete dismantling of public institutions for private gain, ruinous trade agreements, attempts to destroy public pensions and Social Security so the Wall Street crooks can gamble it all away, complete indifference by D.C. politicians to job creation and to unemployment, destroying public education and limiting educational opportunity for the masses, destruction of the right to organize, efforts to further erode and destroy the middle class, and related issues. The poison of neoliberalism/economic libertarianism is THE issue of our time, and our country is literally on the ropes. But hey, focus on non-issues like pot, like gay marriage, like abortion, like illegal immigration so the billionaires/hedge fund crooks/neoliberal policymakers-politicians can further steal from you. They are just laughing at how utterly stupid and easily distracted the 99.9999-percent of the American people are. If we don't reverse course in this country, we will wind up living in a third world country in just a few years.

This isn't conspiracy thinking or delusion--this is FACT if you bother to even look around you. The American people have been played like a Stradivarius for over 30 years thinking "government" is the enemy, "unions" are the enemy, public sector employees are the enemy, and all of the phony baloney divide-and-conquer garbage while the elites and their puppets in D.C. continue to run roughshod over us.

The truth of the matter is there are NO meaningful political divisions in this country anymore. It isn't about "left-right," "liberal-conservative," "Democratic-Republican" anymore; this is about blatant class warfare by the few against everybody else, and that few will not be happy until they own everything except perhaps the shirts on everybody else's backs.

They Aren't "Centrists"

Almost all of the D.C. political spectrum these days is between far right and batshit crazy. The Democratic Party has been hijacked by neoliberal policymakers, billionaires, and Wall Street crooks, and it doesn't have to be an organized group called Third Way, either.

The Democratic Party isn't the same party it was even ten years ago, the Rubenites and Clintonites notwithstanding, and it has gotten outright awful with the election in 2008 of a total fake in the White House.

I don't know where Paul Krugman has been all these years. It's been obvious the Democratic Party has been infected with a cancer called neoliberalism, and the party is now in a terminal stage unless or until these frauds are purged from the party.

The Third Way is part of the neoliberal game that most of our politicians in D.C. subscribe to in one way or the other.

People look at how batshit the GOP is and say, "Oh, look how HORRIBLE they are!" Then they turn around and vote for these neoliberal fakers posing as Democrats who put through the same damned thing as the GOP would pull. Actually, it's more likely those things would go through because of these fakers since people are so conned by the "D" after their names.

The Democratic Party isn't the same party it was even ten years ago thanks to these fakers. It's sickening.

Krugman points out the Peter J. Peterson agenda of destroying Social Security and Medicare:

So progressive Democrats have seized on an op-ed by the group Third Way — an op-ed attacking Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio for their terrible, horrible economic populism — as a way to start reclaiming the party from the “centrists”. And it’s working: the centrists are very much on the run.

Why? Part of the answer is that the Democratic party has become more progressive. But I would argue that the centrists are also suffering from their own intellectual bankruptcy.

I mean, going after Warren and de Blasio for not being willing to cut Social Security and their “staunch refusal to address the coming Medicare crisis” ??? Even aside from the question of exactly what the mayor of New York has to do with Medicare, this sounds as if they have been living in a cave for years, maybe reading an occasional screed from the Pete Peterson complex.

Those people are bought and paid for by crooks like Peter J. Peterson, including and especially Obama, who cannot be trusted to preserve anything remotely seen as traditional Democratic Party values.

The Story of Economic/Political Evil

I am glad somebody took the time to look at the origins of "neoliberal" economics because I sure as hell don't have the time or the inclination to do the legwork necessary.

It's a multi-part series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Speaking of neolib economics, their obsession with austerity is why the economy can not get back on trackk:

When Moyers asked what the Treasury should do to help the economy, he said, “Campaign against this austerity obsession. We’re not going to get a big new stimulus package, much as I would like to see it. No, we’re not going to get it this year, anyway. But I’d like to see him saying when somebody says, ‘Well, we need to slash here, we need to slash there.’ And he would say ‘Why would we want to be doing that now? That’s actually going to hurt the economy.’”


“This is the same kind of animal that we confronted in the ’30s. This is depression economics. And the nature of the solution is not really very different now from what it was then,” he said later.

“Depression economics is when the normal things you do to boost the economy, have the Federal Reserve cut interest rates a little bit, are no longer available or effective. It’s a situation where the normal rules of what you– of economic policy, have to be put on hold, and you really need to do extraordinary stuff,” he explained.

Does Obama really believe this? I doubt it; he, too, likes austerity policies.

Milton Friedman: The Untold Story

Too bad Uncle Miltie didn't wind up as just another nobody; his crackpot economic ideas have destroyed entire countries and plague this country to the present day. No matter they have been discredited and debunked, our politicians in both political parties subscribe to this nutballery.

It appears he was peddling bullshit as early as right after the second world war:

The purpose of the FEE — and libertarianism, as it was originally created — was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.

False, whitewashed history is as much a part of the Milton Friedman mythology as it is the libertarian movement’s own airbrushed history about its origins; the 1950 Buchanan Committee hearings expose both as creations of big business lobby groups whose purpose is to deceive and defraud the public and legislators in order to advance the cause of corporate America.

To think this crackpot was EVER given any kind of forum, let alone won the Nobel Prize in 1976, which is mentioned near the end of this column, just boggles the mind.

Friedman was an evil, evil man.

Update February 2014: Sorry about leaving the link out. Corrected it.

An Evil, Evil Man

No, Milton Friedman didn't kill anybody that I am aware of, didn't order the murder of millions of people like Hitler or Stalin, but he destroyed many, many lives and many countries with his crackpot economic theories.

Although he died a few years ago, his evil beliefs still resonate with politicians and powerbrokers despite those theories having been completely debunked and discredited.

Beginning sometime around 1970 the U.S. and most of the ‘free world’ have diverged from traditional “free market capitalism” to something different. Today the U.S. and much of the world’s economies are operating under what I call Monetary Fascism: a system where financial interests control the State for the advancement of the financial class. This is markedly different from traditional Fascism: a system where State and industry work together for the advancement of the State.

Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Knowing that the term ’Fascism’ was universally unpopular; Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics masquerade these works as ‘Capitalism’ and ’Free Market’ economics.

The foundation of Friedman’s corrupting principle is that the investor (money to be more precise) has no duty, obligation or covenant to anyone or anything. Friedman’s ‘Market’ is not subject to ‘any’ human standard of morality, political limitations or national interests. Money is free to act without bounds or conventions. Nothing is prohibited as long as the market can provide a “clearing price”.

The fundamental difference between Adam Smith’s free market capitalism and Friedman’s ‘free market capitalism’ is that Friedman’s is a hyper extractive model, the kind that creates and maintains Third-World-Countries and Banana-Republics, without geo-political borders.

Friedman was an evil son of a bitch and not very bright besides, but look at his handiwork. Hell, you have "Democrats" like Obama who subscribe to that crap.

He wasn't an Adam Smith; he was basically an Ayn Rand type who created a nutso economic theory which became policy in many countries to justify the greed of the elites.

The Neoliberal Follies

When it comes to education policy, the reason Mitt and Rahm are exactly alike on the matter is because there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Mitt and Barry.
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Thirty years of neoliberal economic policies have created disasters like stagnating income for the vast majority of people.
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Speaking of neolibs, Obama goes on and on attacking outsourcing, but he's just as big on it as any Republican.

This "Third Way" or "triangulation" garbage needs to be dumped.

He started playing this game during the Democratic primary in 2007, insisting that if elected president he would renegotiate NAFTA. To no one's surprise, he wasn't in office a month before he reneged on that promise. He was pretending to be someone who believed the populist critique of free trade agreements, but like the academic and business elites with whom he staffs his administration, Obama buys into the conventional case for free trade and never wanted to renegotiate NAFTA. He still doesn't, no matter how many times he complains that "Romney's firms shipped jobs to Mexico." In the long run, capital and labor mobility either benefit us or make us no worse off, insofar as global competition cannot be escaped. I tire of Obama pretending his position is different, and feel especially sorry for the voters he's misleading.

How credible is it that Obama actually thinks there's something unethical about sending jobs to China? Well, here's what Obama said about another ultra-wealthy entrepreneur who outsourced jobs: "We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products. We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that incentive."

What a clueless ass.

Libertarianism = Fascism

I am a huge fan of Michael Lind (Up From Conservatism), and he nails these goddamned libertarians who are poisoning the political dialog as nothing more than fascists. They despise democracy, and therefore as far as I am concerned they are anti-American traitors.

Sorry, but that is what they are. They are pure, unadulterated EVIL:

The history of democratic nation-states since the 19th century proves that Macaulay, and von Mises, and Hayek, as well as lesser lights like Patri Friedman, have been right to argue that democracy is incompatible with libertarianism. Every modern, advanced democracy, including the United States, devotes between a third and half of its GDP to government, in both direct spending on public services like defense and transfer payments. Given the power to vote, most populations will not only vote for some system of government-backed social insurance, but also for all sorts of interventions in individual behavior that libertarians object to, from laws banning nudity in public to laws mandating that people support their children, do not torture or neglect their pets and water their lawns during droughts according to scheduled rationing.

Unfortunately for libertarians who, like Hayek, prefer libertarian dictatorships to welfare-state democracies, even modern authoritarians reject the small-government creed. The most successful authoritarian capitalist regimes, such as today’s China and South Korea and Taiwan before their recent transitions to democracy, have been highly interventionist in economics, promoting economic growth by means of state-controlled banking, state-owned enterprises, government promotion of cartels, suppression of wages and consumption, tariffs and nontariff barriers to imports, toleration of intellectual piracy, massive infrastructure projects to help industry, and subsidies to manufacturers in the form of artificially cheap raw materials, energy and land.

The dread of democracy by libertarians and classical liberals is justified. Libertarianism really is incompatible with democracy. Most libertarians have made it clear which of the two they prefer. The only question that remains to be settled is why anyone should pay attention to libertarians.

Because fascistic assholes like the Koch brothers have bought public opinion when they never should have gotten a foothold here. Crackpots like Milton Friedman were awarded Nobel prizes when they should have been laughed out of every campus in every university in the country.

Now our country is on the ropes because of these fascists. Unfortunately, the neolibs have also polluted the Democratic Party.

This is a Short and Sweet Definition

of what "neoliberalism" is all about:

Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America."

In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end.

It's the ruination of the world.

News, Comments, Etc.

Neoliberalism or libertarianism and Nazism are two sides of the same filthy, ruinious coin.
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News, Etc.

The road to serfdom, indeed the road to ruin, begins with neoliberalism.
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Obscenely wealthy morons Bill and Melinda Gates continue with their anti-public education poison by further trying to propagandize the masses to support their filthy, undemocratic scheme.
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In a Nutshell

it is the neoliberalism, stupid, that is the underlying theme of the current attack on teachers and schools nationwide. It is frankly an assault on our very way of life and democracy.

We are about to lose it all because people are so busy blaming others in the same boat instead of the culprits who really are at the heart of the problems.

Neoliberalism has created this economic mess. It's never worked, and it never will because it runs contrary to having a civilized society.

As long as there are two people in the world, neoliberalism will never work. Someone else has to be in misery to enrich somebody else, and therefore neoliberalism is doomed to fail. A mixed economy is the only system that works; we know that, but then again, the people in charge have fallen sucker to a cult.

Because We Have a President

who either kowtows too much to the right (which would never support him anyway) in some misguided attempt to be "post-partisan" or to help Democrats get more voters or else he is a tool of the right wing, the presidency is actually more important than ever.

This linked piece is in response to this article by Eric Alterman which says in effect Obama ain't a progressive, but progressives or liberals or whatever you call them can't get elected president, at least for the time being.

The problem, of course, is not only is Obama not a progressive or a liberal, but one can make the argument he isn't and has never been a Democrat. What REAL Democrat would propose abolishing public education, continue with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, looking at destroying Social Security and Medicare, do little to jumpstart the economy, and pander to Wall Street? He is NOT making incremental changes to policies that would reach a liberal or "progressive" or Democratic Party goal but instead is dismantling programs that help people and were programs held dear to Democrats. What Obama has done is make the "Democratic" Party just a more benign version of the toxic neoliberalism spouted by Republicans.

This "Third Way" shit, which was nothing more than neoliberalism for "Democrats," should have died with the end of the Clinton presidency. Now it has returned, and the discredited and debunked political and economic philosophy is wrecking havoc everywhere it goes.

Don't say I didn't warn you about this guy when he first announced for the presidency. The way the corporate media were pushing him was a bad sign.