I guess There is no way to get you to use a different wore than "Neo-Liberal." It just seemed like the perfect word for a mid-course correction to US "Liberalism" which did not pay enough attention to long term growth and the ways that budget deficits, and failure to use Pigou taxes (or at least regulations using cost-benefit analysis with the social cost of externalities embedded in the parameters) to correct externalities hampered it. True, that additional redistribution was not part of the idea, but using more explicit distribution to buy political support for more growth-promoting policies.
How sad that the word came to mean tax cuts for the rich and deficits. How tragic that while this "Neoliberalism grew up so did the thicket of land use and "safety" regulations.
The political economy question is how did what came to be called "neoliberalism" go so badly off track from what it could have been? And how do we get it back on track?
When did neoliberalism have that benign meaning? I first encountered the word in the mid-1980s. It already had its current meaning as an economic philosophy arguing that the economy existed for the wealthy and was to work only for their benefit and that strangely had the word "liberal" in it. to soften or at least misattribute the intended damage. Google's Ngram Viewer shows the word arising in the 1980s and being used with increasing frequency over the next decades. Was there some time in the 1970s, perhaps, when it flew under the radar and meant merely a reassessment of liberal economic views?
yes: that reassessment meaning was coined in the 1970s in the US, and it then collided in the 1980s with the European meaning which had been coined in, I think, the 1950s...
I've been a fan of Martin since the World Bank. I'm going to listen as soon as I get a new cell phone. Ezra is the one policy podcast that I'll listen to even though I can't comment on it.
I guess There is no way to get you to use a different wore than "Neo-Liberal." It just seemed like the perfect word for a mid-course correction to US "Liberalism" which did not pay enough attention to long term growth and the ways that budget deficits, and failure to use Pigou taxes (or at least regulations using cost-benefit analysis with the social cost of externalities embedded in the parameters) to correct externalities hampered it. True, that additional redistribution was not part of the idea, but using more explicit distribution to buy political support for more growth-promoting policies.
How sad that the word came to mean tax cuts for the rich and deficits. How tragic that while this "Neoliberalism grew up so did the thicket of land use and "safety" regulations.
The political economy question is how did what came to be called "neoliberalism" go so badly off track from what it could have been? And how do we get it back on track?
This is not a question to which I have ever been able to think up a good answer...
Well, that makes ME feel better about it. :)
When did neoliberalism have that benign meaning? I first encountered the word in the mid-1980s. It already had its current meaning as an economic philosophy arguing that the economy existed for the wealthy and was to work only for their benefit and that strangely had the word "liberal" in it. to soften or at least misattribute the intended damage. Google's Ngram Viewer shows the word arising in the 1980s and being used with increasing frequency over the next decades. Was there some time in the 1970s, perhaps, when it flew under the radar and meant merely a reassessment of liberal economic views?
yes: that reassessment meaning was coined in the 1970s in the US, and it then collided in the 1980s with the European meaning which had been coined in, I think, the 1950s...
I've been a fan of Martin since the World Bank. I'm going to listen as soon as I get a new cell phone. Ezra is the one policy podcast that I'll listen to even though I can't comment on it.
Can we anticipate more posts of class material? The syllabus? I own your book but only have Gerstle's on library loan.
Someday. When things get into better shape...