Dear neoliberal, your 40 year experiment has gone wrong

Can a corrupt throne,
one that creates trouble by law, become Your ally? 

attributed to David the king of Israel, approx. 500 BC, Psalm 94:20

Your 40 year, neoliberal experiment has gone wrong for the vast majority of people.  We are in debt because you loaned us money to spend when our wages went flat.  You gave the richest unfair advantages through the law and made a virtue of exploitation. 

“This is only rhetoric, not facts.”  True.  But it is rhetoric now much truer than yours. 

Contrary to your ideas, the government grew enormously when you tried to limit it.  When you limited government by the repeal of Glass-Steigal, to fabricate a 700 trillion dollar elitist gambling bank, i.e. derivatives market, the government had to pay for your inevitable losses.  The businesses you worked to privatize; military contractors, prisons, pharmaceutical, hospital, health insurance, the mortgage (Fannie Mae) and higher education loan industries (Sallie Mae) are behemoths of deficit spending paid to your privatized businesses.  

Still you clamor about the waste in the 11% of the budget spent on hardship programs while your privatizing ebbs away at our military 18%, and health care 24% budgets.  And still you hope to privatize Social Security 24%, for your finance industry. 

The communist USSR was horribly unjust and cruel to its people because they were loyal to their ideas.  From a pride-blindness oblivious to looming destruction, they held firm to their beliefs about economics.  They were performing a radical experiment which was theoretically sound.  Are you, neoliberal, really the opposite of them?

The original political conservative respects traditions even if he or she doesn’t understand why they are there.  They acknowledge their myopic limitations when juxtaposed to the centuries.  Change, yes, radical blind faith, no. 

“But I am no radical!” you say. What did you leave behind when you took over in the 80s?  

• Top bracket income tax rates of 70% which promoted reinvestment instead of conspicuous consumption,...now our robber barons are cajoled, worshiped, and hopelessly emulated instead of ridiculed as radical and impractical leaders of economic destruction. 
• Regulations and laws that limited monopolies and allowed opportunities for smaller businesses to compete,...now our hometowns and cities are clones of transnational corporations that crowded out local entrepreneurs, community reinvestment and jobs.  We are left with the possibility to start a “niche” business—and,...you’ll take over if they are too successful.  

L. Anton Feriozzi