- This short book is an excellent dissection of an economic ideology that has overtaken modern democratic politics in the last 50 years. The authors are well known and respected commentators on political and social issues. George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. Peter Hutchison is a filmmaker, educator and activist.
- Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is? Inspired by the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in the middle of last century the principle argument was that the role of governments should be to eliminate the obstacles that prevent the expansion of the economy. They must cut taxes, shed regulation, privatise public services, curtail protest, diminish the power of trade unions and eradicate collective bargaining. They must shrink the state and blunt political action. In doing so, they will liberate the market, freeing entrepreneurs to generate the wealth that will enhance the lives of all. Once the market has been released from political restraints, its benefits will be distributed to everyone by means of what the philosopher Adam Smith called the 'invisible hand'.
- After decades of cutbacks in government funding of essential services such as health, welfare, education, public housing, infrastructure, the arts, science, and other spheres, major democracies across the globe are ruptured and inequality is rife. The ordinary citizens, the working class, the exploited casuals, the sick, elderly, addicted, unemployed, homeless, have been abandoned and they're getting angrier. They are fed up and won't take it for much longer. Anti-immigration is being weaponised and becoming ugly. Racist thugs are on the march. We've ended up with what economist John Kenneth Galbraith described as 'private opulence and public squalor': the rich becoming ever wealthier, while the services on which the rest depend are hollowed out.
- Monbiot and Hutchison offer a clear-sighted, lucidly argued case for major reform - a return to substantial government funding of essential services, major tax increases on the rich and limitations on corporate power. They call it 'ambitious intervention'.
- For all this to happen, the excessive accumulation of private wealth will need to be discouraged...Just as there is a poverty line below which no one should fall...there is a wealth line above which no one should rise. Wealth taxes on income and assets, including death duties, must return. Will Labor and other so-called progressive governments around the world do it? Oh please!
- I highly recommend this book. It's an enlightening and inspiring read, and it offers hope. And a fair bit of despair.
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