Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Why the Wealthy Win Every Time

[Octafish]

45. Mirowski's article in 'The Utopian' is a must-read!

Every word, Washington Generals fans.

(9) THOU SHALT KNOW THAT INEQUALITY IS NATURAL

Neoliberals regard inequality of economic resources and political rights not as an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism, but a necessary functional characteristic of their ideal market system. Inequality is not only the natural state of market economies from a neoliberal perspective, but it is actually one of its strongest motor forces for progress. Hence the rich are not parasites, but a boon to mankind. People should be encouraged to envy and emulate the rich. Demands for equality are merely the sour grapes of the losers, or if they are more generous, the atavistic holdovers of old images of justice that must be extirpated from the modern mind-set. As Hayek wrote, “The market order does not bring about any close correspondence between subjective merit or individual needs and rewards.” Indeed, this lack of correlation between reward and effort is one of the major inciters of (misguided) demands for justice on the part of the hoi polloi, and the failure of democratic systems to embrace the neoliberal state, as discussed in Commandment 5, above. “Social justice” is blind, because it remains forever cut off from the Wisdom of the Market. Thus, the vast worldwide trend toward concentration of income and wealth since the 1990s is the playing out of a neoliberal script to produce a more efficient and vibrant capitalism.

Here again we touch upon the recent crisis. This particular neoliberal precept dictates that the widely noted exacerbation of income inequality in the United States since 1980 cannot possibly have played a role in precipitating the crisis in any way. Indeed, attempts by the state to offset or ameliorate the trend toward inequality of wealth — especially through attempts to expand home ownership and consumer credit—become themselves, for neoliberals, major root causes of the crisis. This then gets translated into the preferred neoliberal story of the crisis, which attributes culpability to the Democrats by lodging blame for the housing bubble via securitization with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-utopian.org/post/53360513384/the-thirteen-commandments-of-neoliberalism

Rasta.