For 2024-07-03 We: Office Hours: Six Questions

For 2024-07-03 We: Please put questions for the next round in the comments at the bottom! An experiment, as I think about useful things I can do for the weblog-supporting paid subscribers...

For 2024-06-26 We: Please put questions for the next round in the comments at the bottom! An experiment, as I think about useful things I can do for the weblog-supporting paid subscribers…

---

1) My sense is that you consider yourself more of a left neoliberal than a centrist or right social democrat. Is that correct? And if not, how would you place yourself on that spectrum? And if so, why is that your chosen position?

First of all, I do not think it is possible to be a social democrat today. Social democracy—the New Deal Order—hangs together and is sustainable only while the mode-of-production is that of Mass-Production Society. And we shifted from Mass-Production Society to Global Value-Chain Society a full generation ago.

I found—I find—the arguments for Left-Neoliberalism compelling, as a way to keep (most of) the achievements of the New Deal Order in Global Value-Chain Society. Achieving social-democratic ends through market-oriented means—leveraging market mechanisms to solve social problems while ensuring equitable growth and full employment—appears an easy lift. Or, rather, it appeared an easy lift. Simply align profitabiliy with social desirability through smart regulations, taxes, and subsidies. This would allow for significant public investments in education, infrastructure, and technology, all things that are essential for long-term growth and equity​​.

But it did not work. In practice, Left-Neoliberalism simply does the “starve the beast” hollowing-out of government programs and state capacity that Right-Neoliberalism then uses to fund its tax cuts for the rich and its push for ever-greater income and wealth inequality.

So, in truth, I find myself homeless. The old is dying; the new cannot be born; and so it is a time of monsters.

But I am happy to pretend to be either a Left-Neoliberal or a Social Democrat to troll those who deserve trolling.