economics

Neoliberalism: Do We Need a New Economic Consensus?

Economist
Economics, UC Berkeley
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
December 19th, 2019
So we're supposed to be discussing neoliberalism, are we? Well, I was elected "Chief Neoliberal Shill of 2018" in a rigged joke online poll, so I spent a year looking around for reasons to think that "neoliberalism" might describe a good and useful policy outlook instead of Reagan/Thatcher/Milton Friedman libertarian dogma. I remembered that you had penned a defense of something called "neoliberalism" a while back:
You framed "neoliberalism" as basically a program that protected markets as the basic engine of production and then tried to add a welfare state on top of those markets. And you depicted the main benefits of this system as being poor-country growth and global convergence. That strikes me as a useful definition and a solid assessment of its benefits. A number of very shouty online leftists have, of course, declared that this definition of "neoliberalism" is ahistorical, and that the only acceptable use of the term is to define it as strict Friedmanite libertarianism. But if we accede to that demand, what term shall we use for Clinton/Obama style technocratic center-left pro-globalization welfarism? I believe that that approach, though far from perfect, deserves to still have a voice in the broad left coalition. So what do we call it?
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