Neoliberalism and poverty

Neoliberalism: the ideological root of all our problems
neoliberalism Imagine that citizens of the Soviet Union had not heard of communism. Well, most people areunaware of the name of the ideology that dominates our lives. If mentioned in a conversation, a shrug will win;and although his party has heard the term before, you have trouble defining it . You know what is neoliberalism?Your anonymity is cause and effect of their power. It has been featured in crisis as varied: the financial collapse of 2007 and 2008, outsourcing of money and power to tax havens (the "roles of Panama" are just the tip of the iceberg), the slow destruction of the education and public health, the resurgence of child poverty, loneliness epidemic, the collapse of ecosystems and to the rise of Donald Trump. However, these crises seem isolated elements unrelated. We are not aware that they are all direct or indirect product of the same factor: a philosophy that has a name; or rather, he had it . And what gives more power to act incognito? Neoliberalism is so ubiquitous that even recognize it as ideology. Apparently, we have assumed the ideal of their ancient faith like a natural force; a kind of biological law, as the theory of evolution of Darwin. But he was born with the deliberate intention to remodel human life and shift the center of power. For neoliberalism, competition is the fundamental characteristic of social relations. He states that "the market" produce benefits that could not be achieved by planning, and turns citizens into consumers whose democratic choices are reduced as much to buy and sell, aprocess that supposedly merit rewards and punishes inefficiency. All that limit competition is, from their point of view, contrary to freedom. We must lower taxes, reduce controls and privatize public services. Labor organizations and collective bargaining are nothing more than market distortions that hinder the creation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is a virtue: a reward for effort and a generator of wealth that benefits everyone. The attempt to create a more equitable society is counterproductive and morally corrosive.The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. We assume and reproduce their creed. The rich are rich convinced that its own merits, without privileges (educational, economic, class) have had nothing to do. The poor blame their failure, but can not do much to change the circumstances that determine its existence.¿Structural unemployment? If you are unemployed, it is because he lacks initiative. ¿Housing exorbitant prices?If your account is in the red, it is for incompetence and lack of foresight. What is it that their children's school no longer has physical education facilities? If fatten, it's your fault. In a world ruled by competition, falling become losers to society and to themselves. The epidemic of self - harm, eating disorders, depression, isolation, anxiety and social phobia is one of the consequences of this process, which Paul Verhaeghe documented in his book What About me ?. Not surprisingly, Britain, the country where the neoliberal ideology has been applied more rigorously, is the European capital of solitude. Now, we are all neoliberals. The term was coined neoliberalism in Paris, at a meeting in 1938. Its ideological definition is the daughter of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, two Austrian exiles who rejected social democracy (represented by the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the gradual development of the British welfare state) because they considered it a collectivist expression at the height of communism and the Nazi movement. in the Road to serfdom (1944), Hayek says that state planning crushes individualism and inevitably leads to totalitarianism. His book, which was so successful as Mises Bureaucracy, became eyes of certain rich who saw their ideology an opportunity to get rid of taxes and regulations. In 1947, when Hayek founded the first organization in charge of extending his doctrine (the Mont Perelin Society), received financial support from many millionaires and their foundations. Thanks to them, Hayek began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones described in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of Neoliberal International , " a interatlántica network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. In addition, its rich promoters financed a number of committees of experts whose task was to improve and promote the creed;including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also funded departments and academic positions at many universities, especially Chicago and Virginia. The more growing neoliberalism was more strident. Hayek the idea that governments should regulate competition gave way to prevent monopolies from their US apostles like Milton Friedman the idea that monopolies came to be a prize for effectiveness. But that evolution had another consequence: the movement lost the name. In 1951, Friedman was defined neoliberal without subterfuge. Shortly after the term began to disappear. And if that was not strange enough in an increasingly sharp ideology and an increasingly coherent movement, did not seek a substitute for the lost name.Ideology in the shade Despite its bountiful funding, neoliberalism remained at first in the shadow. The postwar consensus was practically universal: the economic prescriptions of John Maynard Keynes applied in many parts of the world; full employment and reducing poverty were common objectives of the United States and most of Western Europe; capital taxes were high and governments not ashamed to seek social objectives through new and new networks to support public services. But in the 1970s, when the economic crisis hit both sides of the Atlantic and Keynesianism began collapse, neoliberal principles began to make way into mainstream culture. In the words of Friedman, "a change is needed (...) and already had a ready alternative." With the help of journalists and political advisers adherents to the cause, they got the Governments of Jimmy Carter and Jim Callaghan implement elements of neoliberalism (especially monetary policy) in the United States and Britain, respectively.The rest of the package arrived immediately after the electoral victories of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: massive tax cuts for the rich, destruction of unionism, deregulation, privatization and outsourcing and subcontracting of public services. The neoliberal doctrine prevailed in most of the world - and often without any class- democratic consensus through the IMF, the World Bank, the Treaty of Maastricht and the World Trade Organization. Even parties that had belonged to the left adopted its principles; for example, the Labour and Democratic. As Stedman Jones says, "cuesta find another utopia that has come true so completely." It may seem strange that a creed that promised freedom and decision making should be promoted with the slogan: "There isno alternative". But as Hayek said during a visit to Chile of Pinochet (one of the first countries that implemented the program exhaustively), "I feel closer to a neoliberal dictatorship democratic government without liberalism."Freedom of neoliberal that sounds so good when expressed in general terms, it is freedom for the big fish, not the small. Get rid of unions and collective bargaining means freedom to reduce wages. Free from state regulations means freedom to pollute rivers, endangering workers, impose iniquitous interest rates and designing exotic financial instruments. Free of taxes means freedom of redistributive policies that take people out of poverty. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows that neoliberal theorists advocated the use of the crisis to impose unpopular policies, taking advantage of the confusion of the people; for example, after the Pinochet coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the education system" New Orleans. When they can not impose their principles in a country, they imposed through treaties international including "instruments of arbitration between investors and states", ie external courts where corporations can push for social protections are eliminated and environmental . Whenever a Parliament vote to freeze the price of light, to prevent pharmaceutical swindle the state to protect aquifers in danger because of mining or restrict the sale of snuff, corporations denounce and, often they win. Thus, democracy is reduced to theater. The assertion that universal jurisdiction depends on a process of quantification and universal comparison is another of the paradoxes of neoliberalism. Causes workers, job seekers and public services themselves are subjected to an oppressive regime monitoring and evaluation, designed to identify the winners and losers punish.According to Von Mises, his doctrine would liberate us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning; and instead of liberating us from a nightmare, he created another. Less unionism and more privatizations Parents of neoliberalism were not conceived as scam a few, but quickly became that. Economic growth in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in the UK and the US) is significantly lower than that of previous decades; except with regard to the richest. Inequalities of wealth and income, which had been reduced over 60 years, soared thanks to the demolition of unionism, tax cuts, rising housing prices and rent, privatization and deregulation fundamentalism .The privatization all or part of the power utilities, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons allowed large companies establish tolls on basic resources and rents charged for their use to citizens or governments. The term also refers to income revenues that are not the result of work. When someone pays a price inflated by a train ticket, only a portion of that price is intended to compensate operators for the money spent on fuel, wages and materials, among other items; the rest is the realization that corporations have citizens against the wall. The owners and managers of privatized or semi - privatized public services in Britain earn huge fortunes through the process of investing little and charge a lot. In Russia and India, the oligarchs acquire state assets in liquidations by fire. In Mexico, Carlos Slim gained control of almost the entire network of fixed and mobile telephony and became the richest man in the world. Andrew Sayer says in Why We Can not Afford the Rich that financialization has had similar consequences " as with income, interest is (...) a cumulative income that requires no effort ". The more the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, have more control over another asset seconds crucial: money.The interests are, above all, a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. The prices of the properties and the refusal of States to provide funding condemn people to charge debt (think of what happened in Britain when scholarships for school credits were changed), and banks and their executives make . August Sayer argues that the last four decades have been characterized by a transfer of wealth that is not only from poor to rich, but also about others rich: those who earn money by producing goods or services that make money by controlling existing assets and taking profits income, interest or capital. The result earned income have been replaced by income that does not depend on this. The market collapse has neoliberalism in a difficult situation. As if that were not enough banks too big to drop them, corporations are now seen in the position to provide public services. As Tony Judt noted in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that you can not allow national services essential character sink, which means that competition is annulled. Companies bring the benefits and the State bears the cost. A major failure of an ideology, more extremism in its application. Neoliberal governments use the crisis as an excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatize public services that have not yet been privatized, opening holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and return to regular citizens. The State hating himself is dedicated to sink their teeth into all public sector bodies. From economic crisis to political crisis is possible that the most dangerous consequence of neoliberalism is not the economic crisis that has caused, but the political crisis. As the power of the state is reduced, it also reduces our ability to change things by voting. According to neoliberal theory, people exercise their freedom through spending; but some may spend more than others and, in the great democracy of consumers or shareholders, the votes are not distributed equitably. The result is a loss of power of the lower and middle classes. And, as the parties of the right and left of the old neoliberal policies adopted similar, the loss of power becomes loss of rights. More and more people who see themselves driven out of politics. Chris Hedges points out that "no fascist movements found their base in the politically active, but inactive; in the 'losers' who had the feeling, often correctly, that they had no voice and space in the political system. " When politics fails to address the citizens, there are people who change by slogans, symbols and feelings. As an example, fans of Trump seem to believe that the facts and arguments are irrelevant. Judt said that if the dense mesh of interactions between the state and citizens is reduced to little more than authority and obedience, will only be a force that unites us: the power of the State. Normally, totalitarianism feared Hayek arises when governments lose the moral authority derived from the provision of public services and limited to "cajole, threaten and finally to coerce people to obey." Neoliberalism is a god he failed, as real socialism; but unlike this, his doctrine has become a zombie go ahead, staggering. And one reason is their anonymity. Or, more accurately, a cluster of anonymities. The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is invisible promoters. Slowly, slowly, we have started to discover the names of some. We learned that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which manifested itself strongly in the media against increased regulation of the industry snuff, received funds from British American Tobacco since 1963. We learned that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute emerged the Tea Party. We heard what you said Charles Kock to create one of its laboratories of ideas. "To avoid undesirable criticism, we must refrain from doing too much publicity the operation and management system of our organization , " The words used neoliberalism tend more to obscure than to clarify . "The market" sounds like a natural system that is imposed equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure, but is loaded with power relations. "What the market wants" it is usually what corporations and their owners want. The term investment means two very different things, as Sayer observes: one is the financing of productive and socially useful activities; another, the purchase of existing services to squeeze them and get income, interest, dividends and capital gains. Use the same word for two very different activities serves to "conceal the sources of wealth" and push to confuse their extraction creation. Franchising, tax havens and tax breaks a century ago, the rich who had inherited their fortunes despised the nouveau riche ; to the extent that entrepreneurs seeking social acceptance by the process of impersonating rentiers. Today, the relationship is reversed: the rentiers and heirs masquerading as entrepreneurs and claim that their riches are the result of work. Anonymity and confusions of neoliberalism are mixed with the absence of name and relocation of modern capitalism: franchise models that ensure that workers do not know who they work; registered networks so complex and secret tax havens that neither the police can find their own businesses; tax relief systems that confuse the governments themselves and financial products that no one understands. Neoliberalism jealously guards his anonymity. The followers of Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term , arguing, not without reason, that currently only used pejoratively. Some are described as classical or even libertarians, but are descriptions as misleading as curiously modest, because they imply that there is nothing innovative in The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Capitalism and Freedom, the classic Friedman. Nevertheless, the project neoliberal had something admirable; at least in its early days: it was a set of new ideas promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear strategy. He was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became a road to power. The triumph of neoliberalism is also a reflection of the failure of the left. When the economic policies of laissez-faire led to the catastrophe of 1929, Keynes developed a complete economic theory to replace them . When Keynesianism ran aground in the 1970s, and there was a ready alternative. But in 2008, when neoliberalism failed, there was nothing. That is why the zombie go ahead. The left has not produced any new economic framework general for eighty years. Any appeal to Lord Keynes is an implicit acknowledgment of failure. Keynesian propose solutions century crisis is to ignore three obvious problems: to mobilize people with old ideas is very difficult; that defects which came to light in the 1970s have not disappeared and, above all, they have nothing to say about the worst of our predicaments, ecological crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumption and promoting economic growth, but consumption and economic growth are the drivers of environmental destruction. The history of Keynesianism and neoliberalism shows that is not enough to oppose a broken system. We must propose a coherent alternative. Labor, the Democrats and the entire left should focus on developing an economic program Apollo; a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the XXI century. George Monbiot | The Guardian