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Xposted from Good Reads forum (Judi Lynn).
June 1, 2016
After Empowering the 1% and Impoverishing Millions, IMF Admits Neoliberalism a Failure
by Benjamin Dangl
Last week a research wing of the International Monetary Fund came out with a report admitting that neoliberalism has been a failure. The report, entitled, Neoliberalism: Oversold? is hopefully a sign of the ideologys death. They were only about 40 years late. As Naomi Klein tweeted about the report, So all the billionaires it created are going to give back their money, right?
Many of the reports findings which strike to the core of the ideology echo what critics and victims of neoliberalism have been saying for decades.
Instead of delivering growth, the report explains that neoliberal policies of austerity and lowered regulation for capital movement have in fact increased inequality. This inequality might itself undercut growth
As a result, the report states that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they are. However, the report leaves out a few notable items on neoliberalisms history and impact.
The IMF suggests neoliberalism has been a failure. But it has worked very well for the global 1%, which was always the IMF and World Banks intent. As Oxfam reported earlier this year, the wealthiest 1% in the world now has as much wealth as the rest of the planets population combined. (Similarly, investigative journalist Dawn Paley has proven in her book Drug War Capitalismthat far from being a failure, the Drug War has been a huge success for Washington and multinational corporations.)
The IMF report cites Chile as a case study for neoliberalism, but never mentions once that the economic vision was applied in the country through the US-backed Augusto Pinochet dictatorship a major omission which was no casual oversight on the part of the researchers. Across Latin America, neoliberalism and state terror typically went hand in hand.
The fearless Argentine journalist Rodolfo Walsh, in a 1977 Open Letter to the Argentine Military Junta, denounced the oppression of that regime, a dictatorship which orchestrated the murder and disappearance of over 30,000 people.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/01/after-empowering-the-1-and-impoverishing-millions-imf-admits-neoliberalism-a-failure/
BERNIE'S TIME HAS ARRIVED. The world is ready for a significant change!
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)elleng
(130,865 posts)Lodestar
(2,388 posts)AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was asked if a socialist could ever win a general election in the United States. This was in the debate.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, were going to win, because, first, were going to explain what democratic socialism is. And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent, almostown almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; that it is wrong today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent; that when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing healthcare to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that when you have a baby, were not going to separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to havewe are going to have medical and family paid leave like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.
AMY GOODMAN: Thats Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton weighed in, in the same CNN debate.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started, because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families. And I dont think we should confuse what we have to do every so often in America, which is save capitalism from itself. And I think what Senator Sanders is saying certainly makes sense in the terms of the inequality that we have. But we are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America, and its our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesnt run amok and doesnt cause the kind of inequities that were seeing in our economic system.
AMY GOODMAN: So thats Hillary Clinton. You advise Hillary Clinton?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I talk to her, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: So, her response"Were not Denmark"as a put-down to Bernie Sanders?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, its a fact we are not Denmark. But the question is whether the United States is rich enough to be able to make sure that everyone has a basic right to healthcare, family leave, parental, you know, sick leavewe are exceptionalwhether we are a society that can toleratethat should tolerate the levels of inequality that we have. I think Bernie Sanders is right about that. And I think that weHillary is right that one of the strengths of America should be that we can give opportunity for small businesses. Actually, Denmark and Norway do that, as well. So, what I would say is that Bernie is absolutely right that providing the basic necessities of a middle-class society should be the right of everybody in our country.
AMY GOODMAN: Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, author of the new book, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity. To see Part 1 of our conversation, go to democracynow.org.
WATCH MORE
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/12/stiglitz_sanders_is_right_everybody_has
Joseph Stiglitz "How Inequality In Today's Society Endangers Our Future"
Rex
(65,616 posts)They love neo-liberalism and authoritarians.
Lodestar
(2,388 posts)BERNIE!
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)in this inevitable conclusion?
Probably never, because it's working for Them.
Mosby
(16,299 posts)The only way to create more income equality is through authoritarian actions.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)After all, this economic policy has been screwing me my entire working life (36 years). I know I've been short-changed, as do my age group working stiff peers. This really needs to be billboarded across the spectrum of popular financial reporters such as Fox Business News, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes and Fortune magazines. When financial reporters slip back into their lazy tropes about trickle down and supply-side, they need to be called out for it every time.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)They want to enshrine Neoliberalism because they have profited from it so handsomely. In the meantime the rest of us have been shorted from every side. They even conspired to send our jobs overseas.
There will be change one way or another. Just a prediction. We could start fairness right here, right now, but I guess that would be too much to expect.
Never let them forget who was on the right side of history.
AllyCat
(16,178 posts)In fact, given this, nothing will change. Nothing. The 1% want it all until they have only each other to fight for the gold.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Orlando Letelier
August 28, 1976
EXCERPT...
The Economic Prescription and Chile's Reality
SNIP...
These are the basic principles of the economic model offered by Friedman and his followers and adopted by the Chilean junta: that the only possible framework for economic development is one within which the private sector can freely operate; that private enterprise is the most efficient form of economic organization and that, therefore, the private sector should be the predominant factor in the economy. Prices should fluctuate freely in accordance with the laws of competition. Inflation, the worst enemy of economic progress, is the direct result of monetary expansion and can be eliminated only by a drastic reduction of government spending.
Except in present-day Chile, no government in the world gives private enterprise an absolutely free hand. That is so because every economist (except Friedman and his followers) has known for decades that, in the real life of capitalism, there is no such thing as the perfect competition described by classical liberal economists. In March 1975, in Santiago, a newsman dared suggest to Friedman that even in more advanced capitalist countries, as for example the United States, the government applies various types of controls on the economy. Mr. Friedman answered: I have always been against it, I don't approve of them. I believe we should not apply them. I am against economic intervention by the government, in my own country, as well as in Chile or anywhere else (Que Pasa, Chilean weekly, April 3, 1975).
SNIP...
A Rationale tor Power
SNIP...
Until September 11, 1973, the date of the coup, Chilean society had been characterized by the increasing participation of the working class and its political parties in economic and social decision making. Since about 1900, employing the mechanisms of representative democracy, workers had steadily gained new economic, social and political power. The election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was the culmination of this process. For the first time in history a society attempted to build socialism by peaceful means. During Allende's time in office, there was a marked improvement in the conditions of employment, health, housing, land tenure and education of the masses. And as this occurred, the privileged domestic groups and the dominant foreign interests perceived themselves to be seriously threatened.
Despite strong financial and political pressure from abroad and efforts to manipulate the attitudes of the middle class by propaganda, popular support for the Allende government increased significantly between 1970 and 1973. In March 1973, only five months before the military coup, there were Congressional elections in Chile. The political parties of the Popular Unity increased their share of the votes by more than 7 percentage points over their totals in the Presidential election of 1970. This was the first time in Chilean history that the political parties supporting the administration in power gained votes during a midterm election. The trend convinced the national bourgeoisie and its foreign supporters that they would be unable to recoup their privileges through the democratic process. That is why they resolved to destroy the democratic system and the institutions of the state, and, through an alliance with the military, to seize power by force.
In such a context, concentration of wealth is no accident, but a rule; it is not the marginal outcome of a difficult situation -- as they would like the world to believe -- but the base for a social project; it is not an economic liability but a temporary political success. Their real failure is not their apparent inability to redistribute wealth or to generate a more even path of development (these are not their priorities) but their inability to convince the majority of Chileans that their policies are reasonable and necessary. In short, they have failed to destroy the consciousness of the Chilean people. The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years, the closing of trade unions and neighbourhood organizations, and the prohibition of all political activities and all forms of free expression.
While the Chicago boys have provided an appearance of technical respectability to the laissez-faire dreams and political greed of the old landowning oligarchy and upper bourgeoisie of monopolists and financial speculators, the military has applied the brutal force required to achieve those goals. Repression for the majorities and economic freedom for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ditext.com/letelier/chicago.html
MrScorpio
(73,630 posts)Pretty much right after I got to The Pentagon.
Why has it taken them this long to admit it?
Lodestar
(2,388 posts)The 1% have painted themselves into a corner. They're on their own little island and the
masses of people they have attempted to contain/control have become an angry sea.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)And with the information wall, like the USSR, will be the last to know. The backlash is global.
sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)in Salon, Slate, Haaretz, Business Insider, the Independent and the Guardian. I won't believe it until I read abut in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and hear about on Fox and CNN. This story should be breaking at these institutions any time now. I'm holding my breath...Everything is getting dark except for the little bright spots.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)Ccarmona
(1,180 posts)Because of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Lodestar
(2,388 posts)a corner. They've finally reached the end game. They played it out for all it
was worth and now there is nowhere else to go....
appalachiablue
(41,130 posts)Why do I have a sick feeling that like wealth inequality and climate change real attempts to educate the masses and confront this economic system will be minimized and blocked.
pampango
(24,692 posts)take a different view.
Instead of delivering growth, the report explains that neoliberal policies of austerity and lowered regulation for capital movement have in fact increased inequality. This inequality might itself undercut growth As a result, the report states that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they are.
The IMF suggests neoliberalism has been a failure.
It is gratifying to see the IMF itself recognize that hyper capital mobility and austerity aggravate inequality which is bad, even from an elites' perspective. Perhaps Legarde is making a difference and leading the IMF in a direction that its creator, FDR, would finally approve.
UCmeNdc
(9,600 posts)It should be labeled Laissez Faire Conservatism. (Or Neo Economic Conservatism)
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)'Nuff said.
moondust
(19,972 posts)Now they tell us, after the rapaciously greedy have sucked up and hoarded the lion's share of most everything. Oh well, better luck next life.
But what took them so long? Some of us knew that was the road we were on way back when Reagan and Thatcher kicked it into high gear.
malaise
(268,949 posts)I put a huge sticker on my office door in 1983.
IMF - there's got to be a better way.
It was never removed - even when I moved - it's still there - we were way ahead of them.
JHB
(37,158 posts)In the hard sciences there's a name for that sort of thing: Lysenkoism:
Lysenkoism is used colloquially to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.
Lysenko's ideas didn't pan out in practice, but he had the right message (from the Soviet's ideological viewpoint) from the right source ("from a good peasant family", the Russian equivalent of the Clark Kent "wholesome boy from the cornfields of The Heartland" image here in the US) at the right time, so the Soviets adopted it wholesale...and like so many things under the Soviets, dissent was "counterrevolutionary": treason, defilement of all that was good and pure, etc.
Thus, Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives.
Perhaps we should start encouraging use of the term: Chicago Soviet of Economics
SamKnause
(13,097 posts)Raster
(20,998 posts)...they are only admitting publicly that it is a failure FOR THE REST OF US because keeping the charade going is taking more resources than they wish to expend. Austerity for the 99% translates directly to increased wealth for the 1%.
Hillary Clinton is an employee of the 1%.
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)We have a few more days to point this out I guess....why do so many still revere the Clintons? The move to neoliberalism predates Bubba, it actually started bubbling up under Carter. But Bill Clinton put it on steroids.
When enormous corporations can make 100s of billions and pay a lower effective rate than many of us something is amiss. Add to that places like WalMart who make billions and pay peanuts to everyday workers. Greed, pure greed, plain to see...for some us but I guess but not others or they don't care.
Washington runs on legalized bribery. We go to jail for it, they get rich from it.
We need more people who are doing fine to grasp that more and more are not doing fine.