4 ms·

The core neoliberal claim that the economy would thrive if government just got out of the way has been demolished by the events of the past three decades. Has

The core neoliberal claim that the economy would thrive if government just got out of the way has been demolished by the events of the past three decades. Has it though? Where did government get "out of the way"? Where did government "in the way" to make the economy thrive? What does it mean for an economy to thrive anyway? Is it more important for an economy to be efficient, or the people being (ostensibly) subjectively happier with it? After all, several poor countries rank among the happiest in the world. The fact that neoliberalism has not shown itself to be a panacea should not be held against it, considering the lack of demonstrably superior alternatives.

CalRobert 2y ago
So far as I can tell the main things we did was make it illegal to build homes, and say that you can buy stuff made by slaves with horrible environmental impact so long as it’s imported.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  And that's good because the slaves have a slightly higher quality of life than before. Even though our low skill workers are priced out of the economy. But that's good because they should go to college and learn to code! Which 100% of society definitely can afford financially and cognitively since we're all interchangeable cogs. No free college that's too extreme though lol. Plus, iPhones are so cheap! Would you rather have Detroit not in ruins but not be able to afford a new iPhone every year???
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
I'm still waiting for the trickle-down economics from tax breaks to corporations and the ultra-rich to trickle my way. Maybe if I wait harder.
- jksflkjl3jk3 2y ago
  What exactly are you looking for? The quality of life has increased by many metrics for the vast majority of people in the world over the last century.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Probably some of the other metrics then I would guess.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
    The quality of my life has not improved over the course of my adulthood. It was for a while then stalled and now I'm seeing reductions. Like for instance, it used to be that I could go out with dinner at restaurant now and again without having to think about the cost and its impact on my monthly budget. Now I have to ration that kind of activity. I was considering moving to a larger house, but that's fiscally impossible now. I used to take actual vacations on a plane to places - also now off the table. This may seem like whining because I have a place to live and can buy groceries and pay bills. But that's it. I am seeing objective losses in my options because my income is well below inflation (both real and reported). My personal quality of life is decreasing. That is the metric I'm using.
- simonsarris 2y ago
  Median Household Income in the US is 75K. In Germany its 42K (lets round up to 50) Tax Rates on 75K income in the US: 19% (take home 60K). In Germany on 50K: 35% (take home 32K) What are you waiting for, exactly? America is profoundly, almost absurdly prosperous. Truck drivers here make more than software developers in many "modern" countries, even in spite of the fruits of remote work. edit: aredox in replies has even better proof of mass American prosperity vs the rest of the world over the last 20 years. It shows 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile incomes all shooting up for the US and the major European nations mostly stagnating, especially for the 10th and 50th pct populations.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    You should compare individual incomes, not household incomes. American households are large by the standards of the developed world, and single-member households are rare.
  - bogle 2y ago
    Surely that's not the whole story, though. In your example just consider what a German gets from their contribution to the state compared to the USAian. I'm particularly thinking about universal health care and free higher education. According to numbeo.com, the cost of living in the US is 26% higher than Germany (the US is more expensive in almost every metric). It's not just Germany that's both easier and less expensive to live in, either.
  - diffeomorphism 2y ago
    These numbers are very apples to oranges. You also need to account for additional healthcare spending, dental, vision, pension, benefits, cost of living, expenses, costs of education etc. I lived and worked both in LA and in Germany and while the salary sticker prices are quite different, the outcomes are quite similar. Furthermore, the "prosperity" in the US is much, much more unevenly distributed with luxury on one end (e.g. Westwood or Pasadena) and living and working conditions for others that felt more like a third world country (e.g. south of LAX felt very sketchy). And that is not even touching on the drugs and homeless problems. Germans definitely grumble too much, but Americans overshoot in the other direction and gloss over very real problems.
digdugdirk 2y ago
I agree with your second paragraph completely, but I would say that a Scandinavian-style democratic socialism has plenty of evidence for a system that works better. A Mondragon-style cooperative system has a much smaller sample size, but even more positive results in a myriad of outcomes. There's enough alternatives out there to get a conversation started, we shouldn't be dismissive.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Social democracy, not democratic socialism. Scandinavian social democrats abandoned socialism during the cold war and embraced mostly free but regulated markets. Democratic socialism is more similar to what Eurocommunists believed in, but most of them also abandoned socialism after the cold war.
  - aredox 2y ago
    Scandinavian countries have tax rates above 50%, quasi free healthcare and free meals at school. In the US that isn't even considered socialist, That's seen at total communism that would destroy the country in q couple years. Scandinavian countries have done it for decades and are some of the freest countries in the world.
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      Socialism means the abolition of private property. If it's possible to own shares in a company you don't work in, the country is by definition not socialist. Actual socialism was a mainstream political option in Europe until recently. Using the word to refer to something mostly unrelated will only confuse people.
      - JohnBooty 2y ago
        Marx's version of "socialism" meant the abolition of private property. In practicality, like it or not, "socialism" is used to represent an extremely large range of ideas. Today it almost exclusively refers to "social democracy" (ie, what we see in Scandinavia) and almost nobody is out here advocating for the abolition of private property. In America, we see a lot of intentional conflation of these terms, used as a scare tactic, because our public is under-educated on these terms and we have a lot of emotional baggage left over from the Cold War. Many in the media and in politics talk about socialist ideas such as free healthcare and education as if they're a prelude to full-blown Marxist abolition of private property when in reality, literally nobody is asking for that.
candiddevmike 2y ago
Neoliberalism was a loan against the future for cheaper goods and profits today. It has contributed significantly to the wealth inequality in the US and the dismantling of worker's rights.
- katzinsky 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dartos 2y ago
    Mass migration of factories and production from the rust belt to areas with cheaper labor like Mexico and china, sure.
    - katzinsky 2y ago
      Yeah it's both. I think we can agree globalization in general is not kind to domestic workers.
      - dartos 2y ago
        If you’re from a wealthy country with strong labor laws, definitely not. One could cynically view globalization as a workaround for labor regulations
paganel 2y ago
> Where did government get "out of the way"? Come to Eastern Europe and notice the privatization of many services that we had taken for granted back in the day, such as Healthcare.
- nec4b 2y ago
  Which country in Eastern Europe doesn't have national healthcare anymore?
  - paganel 2y ago
    Romania’s is all but privatized by this point, I’m talking de facto.
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  I'd argue that government didn't get out of the way per se, but was slowly captured by money.
aredox 2y ago
[dead]
aredox 2y ago
>the lack of demonstrably superior alternatives. Denmark, Finland...
- senorrib 2y ago
  Not really. 1) Their most prosperous years happened before the wellfare movement. 2) Their economy is hardly more robust than the US.
  - aredox 2y ago
    False on both accounts.
    - dartos 2y ago
      When two people argue and neither has sources or reasoning, we all suffer.
      - drewcoo 2y ago
        You're forgetting common knowledge and obviousness. If I say I'm thinking of getting a dog and someone else on the Internet says credulously "What? What would it ever breathe?" I don't need to find sources to show that dogs can breathe air or that the air where I live is ok for dogs or that dogs don't overly deplete the oxygen meant for me.
        _heimdall 2y ago
        That's a bit of an extreme example though. Its fair to assume people will know dogs need to breath air. It isn't fair to assume that people will be aware of economic and political history of Denmark and Finland. The GP comments also don't include enough information, in my opinion, for a person who is interested to easily search for information to fill in the blanks themselves.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
bryanlarsen 2y ago
We just had: - a global pandemic that killed millions - a shutdown of most industry for months - a shutdown of most travel for 2 years - a cut off of trade with one of the world's leading energy suppliers And we didn't tip into recession or significant improvement. Yes, it was close. Yes, we had some inflation. Yes, we're still wobbly. But primary indicators, GDP and unemployment stayed positive. To have only 4% unemployment after the stresses of the last five years is a gosh darn miracle and fairly convincing proof of competent stewardship over the economy.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This comment is a noticeable step hellward. That's not what this site is for and destroys what it is for, so please make your substantive points without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: turns out your account has ignored so many warnings and continued to post so many flamewar comments that I've banned it. This is not ok: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37387457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37387457 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656917 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35498689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35498689 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773676 (Jan 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839701 (April 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21698409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21698409 (Dec 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775824 (April 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754269 (Aug 2018) (and no, this has nothing to do with ideology one way or the other - it has to do with egregiously flouting HN's rules)
- _heimdall 2y ago
  It will be interesting to see how these events look after a few decades. Most countries reached for extreme measures to attempt to avoid economic disaster after the pandemic response. It could turn out that worked with little or no important side effects. It also could turn out that the economic and social impacts are delayed by more than a few years.

CalRobert 2y ago

So far as I can tell the main things we did was make it illegal to build homes, and say that you can buy stuff made by slaves with horrible environmental impact so long as it’s imported.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
And that's good because the slaves have a slightly higher quality of life than before. Even though our low skill workers are priced out of the economy. But that's good because they should go to college and learn to code! Which 100% of society definitely can afford financially and cognitively since we're all interchangeable cogs. No free college that's too extreme though lol. Plus, iPhones are so cheap! Would you rather have Detroit not in ruins but not be able to afford a new iPhone every year???

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

I'm still waiting for the trickle-down economics from tax breaks to corporations and the ultra-rich to trickle my way. Maybe if I wait harder.

jksflkjl3jk3 2y ago
What exactly are you looking for? The quality of life has increased by many metrics for the vast majority of people in the world over the last century.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Probably some of the other metrics then I would guess.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  The quality of my life has not improved over the course of my adulthood. It was for a while then stalled and now I'm seeing reductions. Like for instance, it used to be that I could go out with dinner at restaurant now and again without having to think about the cost and its impact on my monthly budget. Now I have to ration that kind of activity. I was considering moving to a larger house, but that's fiscally impossible now. I used to take actual vacations on a plane to places - also now off the table. This may seem like whining because I have a place to live and can buy groceries and pay bills. But that's it. I am seeing objective losses in my options because my income is well below inflation (both real and reported). My personal quality of life is decreasing. That is the metric I'm using.
simonsarris 2y ago
Median Household Income in the US is 75K. In Germany its 42K (lets round up to 50) Tax Rates on 75K income in the US: 19% (take home 60K). In Germany on 50K: 35% (take home 32K) What are you waiting for, exactly? America is profoundly, almost absurdly prosperous. Truck drivers here make more than software developers in many "modern" countries, even in spite of the fruits of remote work. edit: aredox in replies has even better proof of mass American prosperity vs the rest of the world over the last 20 years. It shows 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile incomes all shooting up for the US and the major European nations mostly stagnating, especially for the 10th and 50th pct populations.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  You should compare individual incomes, not household incomes. American households are large by the standards of the developed world, and single-member households are rare.
- bogle 2y ago
  Surely that's not the whole story, though. In your example just consider what a German gets from their contribution to the state compared to the USAian. I'm particularly thinking about universal health care and free higher education. According to numbeo.com, the cost of living in the US is 26% higher than Germany (the US is more expensive in almost every metric). It's not just Germany that's both easier and less expensive to live in, either.
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  These numbers are very apples to oranges. You also need to account for additional healthcare spending, dental, vision, pension, benefits, cost of living, expenses, costs of education etc. I lived and worked both in LA and in Germany and while the salary sticker prices are quite different, the outcomes are quite similar. Furthermore, the "prosperity" in the US is much, much more unevenly distributed with luxury on one end (e.g. Westwood or Pasadena) and living and working conditions for others that felt more like a third world country (e.g. south of LAX felt very sketchy). And that is not even touching on the drugs and homeless problems. Germans definitely grumble too much, but Americans overshoot in the other direction and gloss over very real problems.

digdugdirk 2y ago

I agree with your second paragraph completely, but I would say that a Scandinavian-style democratic socialism has plenty of evidence for a system that works better. A Mondragon-style cooperative system has a much smaller sample size, but even more positive results in a myriad of outcomes. There's enough alternatives out there to get a conversation started, we shouldn't be dismissive.

jltsiren 2y ago
Social democracy, not democratic socialism. Scandinavian social democrats abandoned socialism during the cold war and embraced mostly free but regulated markets. Democratic socialism is more similar to what Eurocommunists believed in, but most of them also abandoned socialism after the cold war.
- aredox 2y ago
  Scandinavian countries have tax rates above 50%, quasi free healthcare and free meals at school. In the US that isn't even considered socialist, That's seen at total communism that would destroy the country in q couple years. Scandinavian countries have done it for decades and are some of the freest countries in the world.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    Socialism means the abolition of private property. If it's possible to own shares in a company you don't work in, the country is by definition not socialist. Actual socialism was a mainstream political option in Europe until recently. Using the word to refer to something mostly unrelated will only confuse people.
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      Marx's version of "socialism" meant the abolition of private property. In practicality, like it or not, "socialism" is used to represent an extremely large range of ideas. Today it almost exclusively refers to "social democracy" (ie, what we see in Scandinavia) and almost nobody is out here advocating for the abolition of private property. In America, we see a lot of intentional conflation of these terms, used as a scare tactic, because our public is under-educated on these terms and we have a lot of emotional baggage left over from the Cold War. Many in the media and in politics talk about socialist ideas such as free healthcare and education as if they're a prelude to full-blown Marxist abolition of private property when in reality, literally nobody is asking for that.

candiddevmike 2y ago

Neoliberalism was a loan against the future for cheaper goods and profits today. It has contributed significantly to the wealth inequality in the US and the dismantling of worker's rights.

katzinsky 2y ago
[flagged]
- dartos 2y ago
  Mass migration of factories and production from the rust belt to areas with cheaper labor like Mexico and china, sure.
  - katzinsky 2y ago
    Yeah it's both. I think we can agree globalization in general is not kind to domestic workers.
    - dartos 2y ago
      If you’re from a wealthy country with strong labor laws, definitely not. One could cynically view globalization as a workaround for labor regulations

paganel 2y ago

> Where did government get "out of the way"? Come to Eastern Europe and notice the privatization of many services that we had taken for granted back in the day, such as Healthcare.

nec4b 2y ago
Which country in Eastern Europe doesn't have national healthcare anymore?
- paganel 2y ago
  Romania’s is all but privatized by this point, I’m talking de facto.
ASalazarMX 2y ago
I'd argue that government didn't get out of the way per se, but was slowly captured by money.

aredox 2y ago

[dead]

aredox 2y ago

>the lack of demonstrably superior alternatives. Denmark, Finland...

senorrib 2y ago
Not really. 1) Their most prosperous years happened before the wellfare movement. 2) Their economy is hardly more robust than the US.
- aredox 2y ago
  False on both accounts.
  - dartos 2y ago
    When two people argue and neither has sources or reasoning, we all suffer.
    - drewcoo 2y ago
      You're forgetting common knowledge and obviousness. If I say I'm thinking of getting a dog and someone else on the Internet says credulously "What? What would it ever breathe?" I don't need to find sources to show that dogs can breathe air or that the air where I live is ok for dogs or that dogs don't overly deplete the oxygen meant for me.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        That's a bit of an extreme example though. Its fair to assume people will know dogs need to breath air. It isn't fair to assume that people will be aware of economic and political history of Denmark and Finland. The GP comments also don't include enough information, in my opinion, for a person who is interested to easily search for information to fill in the blanks themselves.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

bryanlarsen 2y ago

We just had: - a global pandemic that killed millions - a shutdown of most industry for months - a shutdown of most travel for 2 years - a cut off of trade with one of the world's leading energy suppliers And we didn't tip into recession or significant improvement. Yes, it was close. Yes, we had some inflation. Yes, we're still wobbly. But primary indicators, GDP and unemployment stayed positive. To have only 4% unemployment after the stresses of the last five years is a gosh darn miracle and fairly convincing proof of competent stewardship over the economy.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This comment is a noticeable step hellward. That's not what this site is for and destroys what it is for, so please make your substantive points without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: turns out your account has ignored so many warnings and continued to post so many flamewar comments that I've banned it. This is not ok: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37387457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37387457 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656917 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35498689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35498689 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773676 (Jan 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839701 (April 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21698409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21698409 (Dec 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19775824 (April 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754269 (Aug 2018) (and no, this has nothing to do with ideology one way or the other - it has to do with egregiously flouting HN's rules)
_heimdall 2y ago
It will be interesting to see how these events look after a few decades. Most countries reached for extreme measures to attempt to avoid economic disaster after the pandemic response. It could turn out that worked with little or no important side effects. It also could turn out that the economic and social impacts are delayed by more than a few years.