Farewell to neoliberalism

Trump’s election is widely – and rightly – seen as marking the end of the neoliberal era of free-market fundamentalism that was institutionalized under Reagan and Thatcher. Describing neoliberalism as “the threadbare rule of plutocrats what pretended to be poverty-fighters,” the distinguished economist Branko Milanovic offers this epitaph:

Neoliberalism was not an ideology of blood and soil but it managed to kill many. It leaves the scene with a scent of falsehood and dishonesty. Not often has an ideology been so mendacious: it called for equality while generating historically unprecedented increases in inequality; it called for democracy while sowing anarchy, discord and chaos; it spoke against ruling classes while creating a new aristocracy of wealth and power; it called for rules while breaking them all; it funded a system of schooled mendacity that tried to erect half-lies as truths.

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