2019/01/01 by George H. Blackford · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Innovations in Educational Methods
paper · doi:10.1093/cpe/bzz005
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
For the past 40 odd years, conservatives in the United States and neoliberals in Europe have attacked the concept of government as if the solution to all problems is to be found in lowering taxes, cutting government expenditures, and eliminating government regulations. We have been guided by this mantra in one way or another since the nineteen seventies, and it hasn’t exactly worked out for the best. The result has been soaring inequality and economic stagnation for the vast majority of the population, an increase in debt relative to income that threatens the stability of the economic system, and one speculative bubble after another that culminated in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The resulting policies have also increased social and political unrest to the point where the rise in populism threatens the stability of governmental systems throughout the world. The free-market ideologues that inspire conservatives and neoliberals have a very simplistic view of reality based on their concept of liberty and freedom. It is their belief that individuals should be allowed the freedom to fend for themselves in free and unfettered markets to provide for their own economic well being without government interference or guarantees. It is the free choices of individuals in free markets that create prosperity and wealth in society, in their view, and individuals owe nothing to society save to honor the contracts they freely enter into.