Teresa May And The Neoliberal Backlash

Teresa May and the neoliberal backlash


This is part two as I wrote back in March a piece entitled – Trump and the free market backlash

http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/475268-trump-and-the-free-market-backlash/

Well just as the rise of Trump seemed to me a reaction to the adverse effects of some 30 plus years of neoliberal policies so in Britain the backlash was expressed in the Brexit vote and it’s a mood that Teresa May the new leader of the right wing Conservative Party and unelected Prime Minister seem to want to harness.

In her speech to the party conference she seemed to reject many of the tenets of neoliberlism which has been the dominant theory of the right for nearly 40 years after overtaking the more left leaning Keynesian model in the 1970’s.

One of the main tenets of neoliberlism is little or no government intervention in directing society as that should be left up to the free market so little or no state spending (no borrowing) or involvement in directing the markets.

Of course that was always bullshit; a ‘free’ market can’t exist, there is always manipulation it’s just a matter of who’s doing it.

But the rhetoric was there and it was important to underpin the ideology.

We now have a UK Conservatives government claiming it will intervene in the market to bring about certain objectives (to improve the lot of ‘working’ people) and use borrow and spend (on big infrastructure projects) to help this along. This sounds a lot like a type of Keynes if not in name.

So is neoliberalism on the wane – I hope so but not sure it is.

 

On the wane? Maybe, but I have doubts. To me it seems that the talk of government intervention is to cover themselves from the consequences of leaving the EU. Of course I could be wrong about that, but it's too early to tell.

 

Hi Bill

Have you seen the new Adam Curtis film the guy that made the Power of nighmares and bitter lake its worth a look.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation


To others i'm not sure its obtainable outside of the uk yet.

 

Balbus - I watched it last night. A lot there, and I thought well put together. The disconnect between the political and media discourse and reality that it highlights is something that many more people need to be aware of. However, I suspect that many will dismiss it as it would be too disturbing to accept the reality. They will continue caught fast in a web of distortions, half-truths and outright lies that the power holding elites propagate.

One thing I thought was missing from the film was any mention of the rise of China and other eastern economies which I think is significant in coming to an understanding the current trends in the world, but it covered a broad sweep of the last 50 years or so, and the points made (and there were a lot) were all very relevant, I found the stuff about the falsification of the situation viz a viz the middle east in general and Colonel Gaddafi in particular very interesting, and it served to confirm my own take on that situation.

If there are any points arising from the film you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to engage. I found it quite thought provoking, and I think maybe it should be on the curriculum for May's new grammar schools

 

Meantime, whilst May and Hammond talk about borrowing the clock is ticking.

http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk

 

The change from one set of ideas to another is like a tanker changing course it takes time.

For example (in simple terms) Keynesian ideas were developed in the 1920-30’s grow to prominence in the 1940-50’s got corrupted in the 1960’s began to be criticised in the 1970’s (with the oil shock) and was being disregarded by the 1980’s.

While the modern form of neoliberlism was developed in the 1940-50’s was strongly promoted by wealth in the 1960-70’s became dominant in the 1980-90’s and criticisms began after the financial crash of 2007-8 and its aftermath, now I see a backlash with Trump, May and Brexit.

The big problem to me is that there does not seem to be an economic model to turn to that fits in with the problems of the 21st century.

I’m a fan of Keynesianism with its emphasis on getting the economy working for everyone with a push for full employment and distributive mechanisms but a lot of that mass employment is based on mass production and mass consumerism often in national settings and so while being a far better choice than neoliberalism it really needs adapting to the needs of the 21st century or something new needs to emerge to deal with the next big thing the ‘post work’ economy.

 

I like the idea of giving everyone a basic income as proposed by the Greens and others. As robotization increases, unemployment is sure to rise, so we need to re-think the ways in which the rewards of collective wealth creation are distributed.
Another Green idea I like is creating a fixed differential between the lowest and highest paid. If such thinking were to gain more widespread acceptance, we just might be able to move away from the failed economic models of the past.


A friend of mine thinks that the whole Brexit thing has the investment banks behind it. He points out that due to the fall in the pound and the rise in stock prices in the City of London, massive amounts of profit are being made already through short selling sterling and buying up cheap shares. The trend he thinks is for financial business to move to the far east, and what we'll see is a kind of massive stripping of assets from the UK. I can't help but think maybe he's onto something there. Given the web of lies over other issues, it wouldn't surprise me if this was at least one of the hidden agendas behind the nonsensical political rhetoric.

 

Posted this in the post a pic of anything thread but maybe you'll like it too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZmI3AMZVPY

Cracked me up :-D Ok, carry on!

 

Boris would make a better comedian than May. But that's not really what the tax payer pays them for.

Knowing British politicians, I doubt screwing his wife was on his agenda for the night anyway.

 

Seems the remark was an unintentional sex joke to begin with :-D Which is why it is funny to me, and esp. the whole room cracking up about it

 

Don't mind me, I'm just an embittered, old, and soon to be ex-European killjoy.

 

It seems Theresa May was singing from a different hymn sheet when she spoke to bankers at Goldman Sachs before the Brexit vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/25/exclusive-leaked-recording-shows-what-theresa-may-really-thinks-about-brexit

 

72 year old Scot's woman on trial for sending death threats to Theresa May.

Now there's a thought...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-37761866

 

Bill

I honestly don’t think they are that clever – having read a lot of history I’m a firm believer in the fuck up rather than the conspiracy.

I’m not denying that self interest and ideology don’t play their part but even that looks like fuck up rather than conspiracy, many of the people that take the actions that end in the bad outcome really don’t see the bad coming because they are blinded by self interest or ideology.

This is what I see so bad about the move to neoliberalism the adverse effects could be predicted it’s just that the interests of wealth that were pushing it were benefiting from it and the politicians got conned into ignoring the warnings.

That’s been going on for years – here is an interesting one - an effects of successive UK governments neoliberal policies is that much of our ‘public’ infrastructure is owned by foreign governments, sovereign funds and hedge funds with the profits all going off shore.

As one comedian put it we successfully nationalized the utility companies it’s just that it was the French and German’s that did the nationalization.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how-the-world-gets-rich-from-privatising-british-public-services-9874048.html

So often ‘we’ pay the taxes and then the government uses that money to subsidies foreign often foreign government owned companies to keep running these operations and those subsidies go into the exchanges of foreign governments who then use that money to build things like schools and hospitals or to pay for services in their own countries.
And it’s not like this has been kept a secret.

 

The 'Banker conspiracy' idea isn't my own as I said. It was put to me by a friend. I was just dropping it into the discussion. I think probably they have some goals which they keep to themselves, but I don't think any kind of over-arching conspiracy is there. And there are also reasons to think that the financial sector would have preferred a remain vote, even if they can make profits on the back of what's happened since the referendum.

On the other hand, since the days of the Medici in Italy, bankers have tried to control the political scene from the background. And in a country where total debt is many times GDP they obviously do have a lot of influence.

 

Bill

Oh I wasn’t claiming you believed it I was just saying I don’t think bankers (or politicians) are clever enough to do the things that you read about in the conspiracy forum or in the pages of international thrillers.

 

Bill

I personally think this is the way to go but it would be a major fight against the neoliberal/free market orthodoxy with its undercurrent of Social Darwinist thinking.

First I’d point out to people that it isn’t new

http://basicincome.org/basic-income/history/)

And of all people Nixon nearly implemented it in the US (in a limited way)

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/

OK what follows is simplistic but might give us a few ideas to examine more closely.

First it would need to be paid for either through heavily taxing the more wealthy (individuals and institutions) or through directly taking over the means of production. I really I can’t see any other way (if you or someone else can think of something I’d really like to hear).

As you say “we need to re-think the ways in which the rewards of collective wealth creation are distributed.”

Well maybe we should begin re-think the whole idea of what contributes to society I mean if people are actually unable to contribute through their labour and think of that labour as their self worth (both in wealth and status) within that society – what replaces it?

 

I find this thread confusing because apparently liberal means something completely different in America. Is the UK adopting the US definition now?

 

I agree proposal is not exactly clear cut. I first came across this idea about 20 years ago when I was studying sociology. Back then it was referred to as BIG -basic income guarantee.

It would require a total re-think in many ways. I'm not an economist, and I don't know how it would operate. Taxation would have to play a significant role. Some public ownership might be one way forward, but I doubt that state ownership would work for everything, and it would give too much power to the state.
But the fact remains that wealth creation is a collective effort, and currently the people at the top receive an entirely disproportionate share of the wealth created. And once you get to a certain level of wealth, it's fairly easy via investment to increase it with very little effort expended. Money for nothing in effect.

Capitalism requires that people define themselves in terms of their role within the system. To be unemployed is considered to be to loose self-respect and dignity. To get beyond that is not going to be at all easy, and I think a very radical shift will be needed. Probably it goes beyond just politics or economics. But technology moves on, and robotization of many types of jobs is definitely on the cards. For one thing it would hugely increase profits for the capitalist. But that has to be balanced by consumers with money in their pockets to buy the stuff produced.
So it's not inconceivable that the old formulas will come under a lot of pressure in the future.

I agree that we need to re-think our ideas about who contributes to society, and perhaps we also need to look at money itself. It has no intrinsic value under the fiat system. In the end it's only worth anything because governments say it is.None of them have anything much other than debt backing it up at the moment. Maybe we were better off with the gold standard.

 

There's a difference between social and economic liberalism. Social liberals tend to believe in freedom of the individual in society, economic liberals believe in a free market.