Sunday 6 November 2022
The end of neoliberalism and the relaunch of better worlds? Truss and Lula bookended long week in politics (and economics)
One swallow does not a summer make it was once commonly said
but maybe a hawk and a swallow make a fall, the literal Fall of the neoliberal
world economic order. The hawk in this case may be the unfunded/unfundable and overreaching tax cuts for the wealthy proposed by Liz Truss
the former, very briefly Prime Minister of England aka the so-called United
Kingdom. Ok nobody told her that tax cuts for the wealthy are destabilizing, let alone the fact that they don’t always work as a stimulus, especially
for the recipients who may simply bank them. But aren’t prime ministers supposed
to know a little more than the average Joe (or Jill)?
As for the swallow, last week’s return to power in Brazil of
Lula represents the return of easier times for the power and economically
marginal in that very unequal country. Together, this recent popular repudiation
of tax cuts and a return to investment in
people (aka social investment) are a sign of neoliberalism’s demise as an instrument of prosperity. By and large the now 40 years of neoliberalism’s
once “new” normal, has been bad for many, particularly the poor and, of course, the environment. As always it is
investment in investment people, i.e. in a better, not just a richer, world that will produce
the human wellbeing for all that is the
purpose of economics (from the ancient Greek for household rule). From well being to better being is TorontotheBetter’s
purpose but when, as through neoliberalism’s cutbacks and government withdrawal,
the well has been impaired, we must restore
it so we can get to the better economics offered by socially directed economics
and economies.
# posted by Taodhg @ 12:33 pm 
