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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSen. Chris Murphy: The Wreckage of Neoliberalism
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/democrats-should-reject-neoliberalism/671850/No paywall
https://archive.is/JbTc7
For millions of Americansespecially those who dont live in the high-income urban mega-economiesit feels like life itself is unspooling.
This sense of dislocation is what Donald Trumps politics of grievance seized upon when he launched his campaign for the presidency in 2015. He offered easy scapegoatsimmigrants, Muslims, and economic elitesto blame for the loss of meaning and economic autonomy felt by many Americans. He signaled an intent to break America apart from the world economy and the international order. He railed against the technology companies that had seemed to replace families and churches as the new enforcers of moral order. Tragically, it worked. And frankly, given that Trump is running even with President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, its still working.
In essence, what Trump is attacking is neoliberalism. Economic neoliberalism underpins the past 70 years of Western economic and cultural order. Broadly speaking, neoliberalism argues that barrier-free international markets, rapidly advancing communications technology and automation, decreased regulation, and empowered citizen-consumers are the keys to prosperity, happiness, and strong democracy.
Though it contains the word liberal, neoliberalism was devised by libertarian-conservative economists and political scientists as an alternative to the state-controlled command economy favored by Communists and other authoritarians. In the decades after the Second World War, Americans settled comfortably into this new paradigm, ready and eager to reap the bounty. For a time, it arrived in spades. But then, about 30 years ago, the project started to fray at the edges. The newly global economy moved Americas well-paying jobsthe ones that had created the U.S.s early- and mid-20th-century blue-collar aristocracyoverseas, but the jobs that replaced them offered lower pay, fewer benefits, and less opportunity for advancement. Technology, which had promised to make our lives easier and more connected, started to get so complicated, and advance at a pace so dizzying, that it no longer felt within our control. Social media joined us, but also bred resentment and societal fragmentation. Automation and online commerce erased our local economies, our local meeting places, and our local news sources. And the consumerism that was supposed to fill our lives with the material rewards necessary for happiness instead left many feeling empty as our cultures and identities got swallowed up by the shapeless, antiseptic, profit-obsessed international economy.
The result, today, is a very real epidemic of American unhappiness. Surveys taken during the past decade suggest that Americans have never been so pessimistic. Despite the nonstop information flow, more Americans report greater feelings of intense loneliness today than at any time before. People know they have more access to thingsshiny things, fancy things, complicated thingsbut they grope for meaning and sense a depressing, decreasing personal control over their own future.
*snip*
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Sen. Chris Murphy: The Wreckage of Neoliberalism (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Apr 2023
OP
And the more things the harder one has to work - and be exploited - to pay for it all
bucolic_frolic
Apr 2023
#1
bucolic_frolic
(43,496 posts)1. And the more things the harder one has to work - and be exploited - to pay for it all
There is the term "trinket capitalism". This is trinket capitalism with technological bells and whistles.