Neoliberalism Defined

 Dollars and Sense. 

Neoliberalism defined. 

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2020/1120macewan.html

 

Has Neoliberalism Underfunded Schools?

BY ARTHUR MACEWAN | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020. DOLLARS AND SENSE. 

Dear Dr. Dollar:

Covid-19 has created severe problems for schools, kids, their parents, and the schools’ teachers and staff. But weren’t these problems already there and worsened by the long-term underfunding of the schools? —Anonymous, via email 

Let me begin to answer your question by presenting you with an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, it is widely perceived that our public schools are underfunded. Moreover, it is easy to lay the problems of underfunding at the doorstep of neoliberalism, with its emphasis on reducing government support for public services and on privatization. On the other hand, expenditures on pre-K–12 public schools in the United States have risen substantially over recent decades. I’ll come back to those rising expenditures shortly. It is useful, however, to first place the widespread concerns about underfunding in context.

Neoliberalism

A central part of that context is the importance of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism became a dominant ideological force affecting economic policy in the 1980s. Earlier, in the post-World War II era, economic policy in the United States was by no means anti-business. But alongside private businesses operating for profit and an acceptance of the idea that markets should be the major determinants of economic activity, policy was also based on the view that government should play a substantial role by providing the foundation for private activity. Coming out of the Great Depression and World War II, government maintained a framework for unionization and a minimum wage, created various worker protections, expanded Social Security, and established Medicare and Medicaid—to say nothing of civil rights legislation that had economic impacts. Also, of course, Keynesian ideas were dominant, which prescribed a major role for fiscal policy—government spending and taxation—as a means of taming, if not eliminating, recessions and inflation.

Neoliberalism, embraced by conservatives in both parties, touted reliance on the “free market” as the path to progress. According to this doctrine, government should remove itself as much as possible from economic activity, relying on private firms motivated by profit to handle economic and social affairs (think prisons and hospitals). The government could spend money on social programs, including education, but, according to this outlook, it should be private firms that do the job—educating children for example. Furthermore, the argument goes, private firms would be more efficient than government programs, allowing government spending to be reduced. So, in the ideology of neoliberalism, less government spending and privatization went together. Leaving aside the question of whether there is really such a thing as the “free market” (but see sidebar, “The Free Market?”), the term “neoliberalism” is confusing because it is an ideology associated with political conservatives, not political liberals. In the 19th century, the era when classical liberalism emerged, the term “liberalism” developed in association with those who favored a reduction in government control of the economy. And it is from that economic use of the term that neoliberalism emerged in the modern era.