Welcome To Neoliberalism: Be Free To Pay Forever

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Welcome to Neoliberalism. Bienvenida. Here in downtown Neoliberalis there is a new kind of freedom. You are free to pay for everything. User pays, you see. There are no evil socialist  institutions, none left anyway. No universal healthcare. No social security, no welfare from the government. Indeed, we are doing away with the whole concept of government. Business can do it better. Business can do it cheaper and much more efficiently. Then, we don’t need public servants, do we? Non, monsieur. Only honest, salt of the earth billionaires to run the show. Welcome to Neoliberalism: Be free to pay forever.

Neoliberalism What Does It Mean?

Neo means new. Liberal means

“relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.” https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

Neoliberal economics refers to:

“Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.”

• (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world)

My Own Brush With Neoliberal Labor Governments

Recently, due to my own economic crisis, I took a labouring job under the auspices of the Queensland Department of  Agriculture & Fisheries (DAF). My work and the program was funded from the budgets of both federal and state governments. At the time I joined in 2024, both of these governments were Labor governments. Despite this I had been hired by a labour hire company and the entire program  was run in this way. Many hundreds of workers were on labour hire contracts. I found this strange under Labor governments. This is another example of how all governments, no matter their political colour, have been in thrall to neoliberalism since the early 1980s. Running government programs via private enterprises, which minimise worker’s rights by offering casual hourly rates for ostensibly full time jobs. Therefore, depriving workers of sick days, paid holidays and a host of other basic rights. Workers can be dismissed immediately without notice and knocked off when the weather doesn’t suit management. Union power is virtually non-existent within labour hire workforces. Welcome to Neoliberalism: Be free to pay forever.

Neoliberal Labor Governments

Governments of both persuasions love not being directly responsible for the performance of services and institutions. Being at one remove from the organisations running the operation gives these politicians the freedom to simply be mouth pieces for policies. Australian politicians have never been so highly paid in our history and actually do less real stuff than ever before. It is all piss and wind, served up in the media. Prime Minister would you like to comment … blah blah blah. This is why we have no social housing stocks any more. Why they spend tens of billions of dollars, tax payer dollars on private consultants who are not public servants and are not transparent or accountable, it seems. This generation of politicians are too scared to change the settings and probably glad not to be responsible for actually getting stuff done.

“Neoliberalism is an old term, dating back to the 1930s, but it has been revived as a way of describing our current politics – or more precisely, the range of thought allowed by our politics. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, it was a way of assigning responsibility for the debacle, not to a political party per se, but to an establishment that had conceded its authority to the market. For the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK, this concession was depicted as a grotesque betrayal of principle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it was said, had abandoned the left’s traditional commitments, especially to workers, in favour of a global financial elite and the self-serving policies that enriched them; and in doing so, had enabled a sickening rise in inequality.”

• (Stephen Metcalf, The Guardian, 2017)

Neoliberalism & Corruption Are Close Mates

Neoliberalism is invariably accompanied by corruption, as business skirts onerous regulatory controls in the name of greater efficiency. Privatisation of services and institutions creates oligarchs and billionaires. The examples are everywhere in the US, Russia of course, and here at home. Jobs for the boys, inside running for mates to get tenders, and investors profiting from government decisions. The way Donald Trump wants to run things, where everything is for sale with no exceptions, will see endemic corruption flourish. The people who vote for this way of doing things do so in the hope that they will somehow get on the gravy train. And that the economy will grow on the back of unchecked greed and deregulated markets. Flattened tax rates, also, accompany neoliberal economic governments. The rich get much richer and the poor stay poor. We are in the midst of this already and have been for decades. The divide between the wealthy and everybody else has never been wider, it a chasm. Welcome to Neoliberalism: Be free to pay forever.

I do not see any brave politicians on the horizon with the guts to change anything. The current crop are neoliberals themselves, as are all the economists with jobs working for the banks, the RBA, the IMF and so on. They all sing from the same song sheet, written for them by the Austrians and served up by Reagan and Thatcher.

“The moniker “neoliberalism” was coined by Austrian economists Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises in 1938. Each elaborated his own version of the notion in 1944 books: “The Road to Serfdom” and “Bureaucracy,” respectively.”

• (https://theconversation.com/what-is-neoliberalism-a-political-scientist-explains-the-use-and-evolution-of-the-term-184711 )

It was the economic and government demise of the lasting appeal of the New Deal. Roosevelt’s Keynesian cure to the Great Depression in the US.

Generations of economists and government policy apparatchiks have grown up believing that governments should stay out of running things in the real world. Let the market take care of it – is the mantra. Well, the market has not taken care of housing in Australia, as people have been forced to live in tents for the last few years. The market cyclically gives us all high inflation and a cost of living crisis of which the only answer, according to central bankers is monetary policy and steeply rising interest rates. More punishment for the poorest of us all. These are tired old answers to very real concerns involving the lives of human beings. It seems we can be kind and helpful to citizens during a pandemic but not when economic forces turn the wheel of fortune – then it is all hands off the government levers and folk fending for themselves. Whilst the rich grow ever richer and the poor? You know the rest.

Welcome to Neoliberalism. Bienvenida. Here in downtown Neoliberalis there is a new kind of freedom. You are free to pay for everything. User pays, you see. There are no evil socialist  institutions, none left anyway. No universal healthcare. No social security, no welfare from the government. Indeed, we are doing away with the whole concept of government. Business can do it better. Business can do it cheaper and much more efficiently. Then, we don’t need public servants, do we? Non, monsieur. Only honest, salt of the earth billionaires to run the show. The leering face of Tony Abbott. The many lies of Scott Morrison. The mock innocent face of Alan Tudge and the Robodebt betrayal of the Australian people– half a million Aussies falsely accused of owing money to Centrelink. These are the images and memories left by neoliberalism and its staunchest defenders of the faith. Trickledown effect? A bitter effluent that stinks and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Lest we forget.

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.

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