Who to blame, indeed? The ‘neoliberals,’ apparently. For those living in countries with political parties called ‘liberal’, the root of neoliberal is at least somewhat familiar, if not always helpful. This is particularly true in Canada, where the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party periodically swing to the left or to the right of each other across the centre of the political spectrum. What is liberalism anyway? And for that matter, conservatism?
And now, without a clear idea of liberalism (or conservatism), we’re expected to swallow the notion of neoliberalism! It would be almost too much for a mind to wrap around were it not for an extremely helpful article by one of the world’s premier newspapers.
The article is not in fact all that useful in helping understand the root term, ‘liberal.’ But it lays out a compelling case that neoliberals, in their quest for small rather than large government, have disowned responsibility in the UK for just about everything. They’ve done so by handing it over to the private sector. Private enterprise has in turn, in a comparatively few short years, cocked everything up.
That cock-up includes an utter failure of the private sector to come to grips in any meaningful way with a national affordable housing crisis.
The following article suggests that these failures of the private sector are not so much a festival of incompetence, but instead a confidence trick. If you’re not a UK kind of person, perhaps the article can help you to identify some neoliberal con jobs in your country.
Read more in The Guardian: Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick – even the IMF says so
