Straight Dope 3/24/2023: What was neoliberalism, is it dead, and was it really so bad?

Hi. I appreciated your poll-based contributions.

I also liked most of the analysis from other posters, particularly the ones, such as Dr. Paprika, that emphasized that there were many reasons for Trump’s popularity.

My own interest is defining which reasons were important to the Trump fanatics, because the threats of violence and the domination of the Republican primary system are the big dangers of the Orange Plague. But, this is wandering afield from the topic of neoliberalism.

Thanks. I was beginning to wonder whether anybody had noticed them.

Or especially Democrats.

I did and they were an excellent counterpoint what many had argued.

Thanks again!

His willingness to whistle audibly, and in the case of immigration come right out with blatantly racist statements, certainly distinguished him from other Republican candidates who are still trying to hem their way around the GOP politics that are a continuation of those defined by Lee Atwater (of “N****r N*****r” infamy) and Newt Gingrich. But really, Trump just grasped onto the concept of the “Other” so openly appeal to the fears of voters (some of which is actually about the economic issues and uncertainties they face, especially after the mortgage-backed securities bubble burst and easy ‘NINJA’ loans no longer allowed every stripper and used car salesman to buy a big home) instead of using the more subtle FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) strategy.

It is no coincidence that Trump adopted the “Make American Great Again” slogan from Reagan and applied some very Reagan-esque policies and positions, just turning the Soviet threat into China, Southeast Asian immigrants into Muslims and Mexicans, riding the fear of government regulation and labor unions destroying economic growth, et cetera. Trump is in many ways just a satire version of Reagan come to life right down to the celebrity appeal, general disinterest in details, and selling the idea that the only way to “Make America Great” is to squash down everyone else.

Stranger

Everything we say here is a gross generalization. As one, cheap jobs is a stronger explanation than, say, automation, and I’ll defend it in a moment.

First, I need to rant that history is as enormous as and maybe more complicated than the universe. Multiple approaches to “how we got to here” necessarily exist. As in the example above, people tend to look at their fields of interest and expertise to concoct brief stories that have beginnings, middles, and ends, sometimes happy endings, sometimes sad ones. I know of anthologies in which writers were given the same base idea and told to write a story around it. No two of the stories are ever different. History should - must, most would say - adhere to nonfiction but the way history is told is always a story, meant to be persuasive. What is neoliberalism? It is a story, told by different people in different ways.

What is that but globalism? Globalism didn’t begin last Tuesday. Most historians argue today that world trade arose as we see it from the realizations of European sea-bordering nations that they could do just that, by invading and colonizing some territories and setting up trade routes with others for non-viable European products like silk and spices, sugar and cotton. Soon plantations exploiting cheap labor sprouted in the Americas and Asia; later this was extended to Africa along with mining.

Modern-day globalism is not different at its base. We still talk about slave labor, exploited workforces, corporations owning workers’ lives. The hand of the “Free Market” is not in the least invisible. It is made possible by governments allowing corporate entities to act as imperially as nation-states once did, with as few ramifications.

That there have ever been ramifications is what has historically stratified liberals from conservatives (the names also a gross generalization encompassing a series of historic movements). Conservatives strip profit-draining regulations; liberals encourage public-benefit regulations. The dividing line is sometimes hard to see but the tendency is clear.

Both conservatives and liberals have failed the public. (That segments morphed into the arguably far worse neoconservatives and neoliberals meant that little to no progress could ever be made.) No question this is a failure of leadership.

Leadership can be opposed by a united public. (Vastly different such movements have been called progressives in the the U.S. but it’s the only handy name.) Progressives have had some success at ramifications. They tend to come in spurts every 20-30 years since the beginning of the 20th century. When they have had public backing they’ve won. When the public is indifferent or actively hostile (“forced” busing the 60s) they not only have failed but likely set back their causes for long periods. (Schools in many places are more segregated today than in the 60s because people moved to places with similar others, thereby also making neighborhoods more politically skewed than at any other time.)

This is the story as my reading and outlook tells it. Vast money on one side and vast numbers on the other. Progress is made only on the rare instances when the latter stands up to the former. This is difficult because some of the vast amounts of money have “trickled down” making hundreds of millions around the world palpably better than off than in the past. (The same forces drew farmers to horrifying factory jobs in horrifying slums because that life was still somehow better than their previous life. This scenario continues to play out today in Africa and Asia.)

Good leaders may cause, and certain widen progressive instances, but expecting good leaders to herd the interests of cats on a regular basis is futile. When your curtains are torn, blame the cats - not leadership.

tl;dr Everybody is at fault except the few who aren’t.

I’m just quoting this as beautifully succinct. I’d replace “money” with “power” (money + control of other other resources + prestige), but absolutely agree.

Thank you. Any time I get called “succinct” is a good day. “Beautifully” is a topper.

It’s called “free trade” because the companies are allowed to locate production anywhere they want and to sell anywhere they want.

But it’s not genuine free trade, because the workforce is forbidden (for the most part) to move across borders in the same fashion.

– it wouldn’t be fully equivalent even if the borders were open, at least except for fast checks for transmissable disease, contraband items, and history of non-defensive violence; because the executive who decides to locate a factory three countries over from where they’re living is unlikely to have to uproot their entire life, massively reduce their connections with family, neighbors, and possibly-beloved specific location, and very likely learn a new language and different culture, in order to do so. But it would be a hell of a lot closer.

However, very few people going on about free trade mean that they want the workforce to be able to move freely.

Sometimes. Sometimes they’d been driven out of their previous lives, either by direct takeover of their lands or because of environmental damage having been done to the point at which they could no longer get drinkable water and/or could no longer keep getting food by techniques that had previously worked for centuries. And sometimes they’d been lied to about what those factory jobs and living conditions would be like, and found out too late but also found it very difficult to get back home.

What stands out to me is college educated voters, white and non-white, backed Clinton:

Overall, whites with a four-year college degree or more education made up 30% of all validated voters. Among these voters, far more (55%) said they voted for Clinton than for Trump (38%). Among the much larger group of white voters who had not completed college (44% of all voters), Trump won by more than two-to-one (64% to 28%).

This seems to back the general trends mentioned by Cecil, and seems to contradict the Guardian cite in your other post.

I don’t think it backs economic insecurity being the primary or sole cause; which as I pointed out is clearly contradicted by the statistics. Sure, some people voted for Trump because they thought he could bring back blue-collar jobs; but what put him over the top was people who did have money, some of whom thought he’d help them get even more at the expense of the blue-collar people.

I think that education difference indicates that people with better education were better able to pick out truth from lies in the information they were getting, and/or had access to / tended to use different information sources.

Fair enough. Neoliberalism is much too mushy a term to mean much. If “globalism” predates America and neoliberalism, there still remains conflict between laissez-faire policies and human rights ideals, which is also hardly new. The argument that neoliberals (corporate moderates) no longer exist is weak. These ideas remain popular in Canada with most of the major parties.

“Corporate moderate” actually describes Biden (and Clinton) passably well, better than pretending Biden is the opposite of whatever neoliberalism is. If anything, Biden is a political pragmatist, as was Clinton and eventually, Obama.

Similarly, it is correct that changes in what it means to be conservative is what helped Trump, who is a populist wiling to say what he thinks supporters want to hear, and is not particularly Conservative. It is also correct that Neoliberalism had relatively little to do with Trump’s election. I like your succinct description of class conflict. This column is not Cecil’s most succinct effort.

I look at displaced workers from the other way around. If there were funding for trade/vocational education and certifications to help rural workers make a living wage, they wouldn’t have voted for a buffoon like Trump.

And yet there is, and yet they did.

For example, like this program from the U.S. Department of Education? You have to admit that there is much more emphasis and funding (federal, state, and private) in the US on higher education (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oregon State University) than on trade schools (for example community college auto mechanic courses). I think Trump was elected because politicians like Hilary forget about blue-collar workers and rural folks. We need a better choice for conservatives than Trump and a better choice for liberals than Biden.

All true. Nevertheless, the trend is constant from Victorian England to modern-day China to the rapidly-growing urbanism in Africa. City living brings advantages that low-density communities do not, even if individual living conditions are inadequate. The living conditions in rural poverty are also inadequate without any of the other advantages. “Inadequate” is a neutral term suggesting various degrees of horrific.

I found a Pew Research page with breakdowns of multiple demographics comparing 2016 with 2020. Cherrypicking might give any result you want to prove. My overall read is that Biden won because Trump’s base did not grow sufficiently, while other demographics did. That conforms with more recent reading of where the populace has gone since, but I readily admit bias.

Also certainly true. The Democrats always pick politicians while the Republicans increasingly pick ideologues. Ideologues have the advantage that they can give succinct reasons to vote, especially negatives: against abortion, against immigration, against wokeness. Againstness almost always wins: against against abortion worked as a counter-strategy in 2022. Sometimes forness is a winning strategy, but what is being advocated for must be expressed specifically and clearly as well as being reasonably attainable. Modern American progressives too often clearly express what they are for but give no path toward its attainment other than “Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” History tells us that is a losing strategy and has been for decades.

Sadly, in Canada the idea of making a party’s political platform as vague as possible, for as long as possible, with no real budgeting or roadmap except for frequently using the term “made in Canada plan”, does seem to be a winning strategy which all parties have adopted.

The plans of Canadian politicians would often be more successful if they seriously asked “What did they do in Australia”, a similar country which often seems to be more pragmatic than we are.

No I don’t have to admit any such thing. I know lots of people that got Perkins loans for vocational colleges.

Where do you get the idea that it’s reserved for Ivy league schools?

From your cite

What she said: “We’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people,” Clinton said. “Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.”

What they heard: “Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels”

This highlights two distinct problems: One is that vocational ‘retraining’ programs are not enough. There actually have to be jobs for people to work on, and this salient point was often overlooked by politicians across the spectrum as they focused on the urban demographic and keeping corporate benefactors happy. The other is that ‘retraining’ often means essentially restarting at the bottom rung of a new field unless there are applicable skills and experience that transfer over. Someone who has made good pay and overtime as a welder at a coal fired power plant, a millwright at a factory, or working as a roughneck on a fracking project is going to look at retraining into a job where they are only making a barely living wage to start as still a serious blow to their fiscal stability.

And while there are certainly hypothetical programs where those existing skills could be applicable and retraining into comparable paying jobs is possible, e.g. rebuilding and upgrading electrical and mechanical infrastructure or building sustainable power production systems, nobody has shown much interest in broadly funding those despite the fact that it is desperately needed. Instead, the people in areas that are devastated by shutting down mines, factories, and power plants are left to either migrate to where they can find work or scrabble along on what few jobs remain.

Stranger