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First, what is your definition of neoliberalism? Second, why do you think a country like Germany (where the ratio of government expenditure to GDP is around 50

First, what is your definition of neoliberalism? Second, why do you think a country like Germany (where the ratio of government expenditure to GDP is around 50%) can be classified as “neoliberal” in the sense you mean it?

croes 3y ago
Maybe because they replaced lots of social security features by private company insurances. Health care and pensions cover hardly all your needs and need to be supplemented by private insurances. They privatised or try to privatise essential services like postal services, telecommunications and railroads. They got rid of government experts in favor of external private company "experts". In combination with construction contracts being put out to tender this leads to failures like the BER airport. All these private companies weren't able to built and airport that complies with the building regulations. So they either aren't as effective as neoliberlism claims or they exploited the lack of governmental oversight to get more money. Not to mention the millions politicians like Ursula vin der Leyen gave to companies like McKinsey to advise on the modernisations of the Armed Forces which lead to the opposite. They are neoliberal, it's just isn't so easy to sell it to the people as something positive. That's why the SPD was needed to implement a wage raise killer like Hartz IV, because people thought of the SPD as a social party working for the workers.
js8 3y ago
Neoliberalism: Free trade and globalization is good, state ownership and state economic investment bad. Germany was certainly less damaged by neoliberalism (which is an ideology, actual practice might be different) than the US and UK, who were the major proponents of neoliberalism. I think the reason was that Germany has tripartism, which makes union-industry negotiations less antagonistic. But, the Eurozone was built according to neoliberal principles (and associated austerity policies), and the results were catastrophic for the EU. That's why we (I am Czech) need to snap out of it. Ha-Joon Chang and George Stiglitz describe the problems of neoliberalism as a strategy of economic development in their books.

croes 3y ago

Maybe because they replaced lots of social security features by private company insurances. Health care and pensions cover hardly all your needs and need to be supplemented by private insurances. They privatised or try to privatise essential services like postal services, telecommunications and railroads. They got rid of government experts in favor of external private company "experts". In combination with construction contracts being put out to tender this leads to failures like the BER airport. All these private companies weren't able to built and airport that complies with the building regulations. So they either aren't as effective as neoliberlism claims or they exploited the lack of governmental oversight to get more money. Not to mention the millions politicians like Ursula vin der Leyen gave to companies like McKinsey to advise on the modernisations of the Armed Forces which lead to the opposite. They are neoliberal, it's just isn't so easy to sell it to the people as something positive. That's why the SPD was needed to implement a wage raise killer like Hartz IV, because people thought of the SPD as a social party working for the workers.

js8 3y ago

Neoliberalism: Free trade and globalization is good, state ownership and state economic investment bad. Germany was certainly less damaged by neoliberalism (which is an ideology, actual practice might be different) than the US and UK, who were the major proponents of neoliberalism. I think the reason was that Germany has tripartism, which makes union-industry negotiations less antagonistic. But, the Eurozone was built according to neoliberal principles (and associated austerity policies), and the results were catastrophic for the EU. That's why we (I am Czech) need to snap out of it. Ha-Joon Chang and George Stiglitz describe the problems of neoliberalism as a strategy of economic development in their books.