Reagan and Thatcher and the neo-cons

[Threviel]

The change your mind thread got me thinking. As a kid in the eighties and early nineties I idolized Reagan and Thatcher and growing up I became a neo-conservative. I was active politically in the conservative party and I thought the government inefficient and useless in many ways.

Sweden in that time (80s-20s) took a hard right turn, as many western nations did, and the economy improved and we got wealthier and wealthier. Most statistics on income and GDP and material quality of life pointing to me being correct and a hugely successful conservative/liberal government 2006-2014 reinforced that image.

But this last year I've been re-considering. Removing my rose-tinted nostalgic glasses and looking at what the neo-conservatives did, both good and bad, has made me think that a lot of what they did go into the bad side. And perhaps their legacy, in the end, will be disastrous.

What did Reagan and his brand of neo-conservatism do?
- Took down the unions in the US, starting with the air traffic controller.
    I See unions as a net positive. Sure, curtail their powers and make damn sure that they are not in control, but they are still an organization that can be dealt with and that takes the side of the little guys.

- Removed a lot of funding for a lot of social welfare
    Some say he is responsible for a lot of homelessness by defunding psychiatric care. In general social welfare, be it daycare or food stamps help the weakest and is quite cheap. Better to pay a welfare check and get the guy of the street than get a criminal costing more in a prison costing even more. Todays legacy of stripping welfare and having a for-profit prison system has made the US the unrivalled world leader in imprisoning its own population (of the not evil dictatorships that is).

- Invited the religious nutjobs into government.
    By cooperating with the religious right he is more or less responsible for the Republican party of today. Religious fucking nutjobs should stay the fuck away from any kind of desicion making. Possibly the worst legacy of his. Seems to breaking up the cohesion of the US and has caused one serious rebellion so far.

- Schools
    This is just a thought of mine without any deeper data gathering. The US school system seems to be broken due to low funds. This causes a less educated population and we're back to todays republican voters and one serious rebellion that could have been fateful unless they were all idiots.

- Health care
   The private health care system the US insists on having is the worlds most inefficient and a huge waste of resources. On the one hand a totally needless insurance industry costing untold amounts of money is built up just to handle billing. On the other, the weakest in society and those most in need don't get the health care they need further pushing them down and keeping them weak.


Thatcher we have discussed ad nauseam, but her greatest legacy seems to be the dismantling of lower level government causing todays politicians. And a lot of the the other neo-conservative stuff.

And in the end we have a US talking big about the American dream but where it's actually far more difficult than in Sweden to go from rags to riches.

Now this is just some morning thoughts and I'm very possible wrong about some things, but what do you guys think?

[DGuller]

I neither consciously lived through their period, or the period preceding them, so I can only go by my knowledge of history.  My view of of the period is that it was a period of over-adjustment. 

I don't think we should lament too much the state of things before them, as it sounded horrifically dysfunctional in its own way.  However, Reagan and Thatcher merely replaced one dogma with another.  It had some success, in places where their dogma seemed to work better than the old dogma, but it also set us up for today's big problems.

[Threviel]

Yeah. Thinking a bit more about it almost all the good they did have become so natural for us that we forget what they did.

One example is that the Swedish government outlawed wireless phones in the 80s. Every phone was owned by the ministry of communication and you more or less only rented it and it was forbidden to own/use the new fangled wireless ones.

They tried to outlaw parabolic antennas and cable tv, the state should handle all entertainment.

Such outlandish shenanigans are all but forgotten, and it's the de-regulation movement that is large responsible for that.

[Berkut]

I posted a thread a while back talking about how when you step back for a moment and look at the human condition globally, the past 70 years has been kind of an astounding success in doing most of the things a progressive, humanist, liberal society ought to want.

Global poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, people living under non-democratic systems, starvation and malnutrition - all of these metrics of the actual human condition have improved. And not by just a little bit, but by astounding amounts. That isn't to say there aren't a lot of problems yet to be tackled (and arguments, good arguments, to be made about whether or not some or all of that improvement was possible because we are fucking up the planet royally through terrible management of the climate).

Given how much success has been had on these fronts, it makes sense to consider the idea that in fact a global free market economy is a pretty fucking great thing, and we should be rather careful to make sure that engine keeps trucking along even while we carefully curtail the issues of inequality and the dangers around information technology and how it can be used for fighting against one of the key components that incredible increase in the human condition (political freedom).

You would think I suggested we all become Randians. The response to data and facts from some on the left worries me greatly at the idea we should turn over the economy to them. The right has become a religiously motivated zealotry of pseudo-conservative proto authoritarianism, and the radical left seems intent on tearing down the very things that have objectively resulted in the greatest increase in the human condition ever seen rather then recognize that in fact the free market economic engine actually broadly works really damn well to create wealth.

I am worried. Obviously I support the sane, progressive left of the middle ground, pro free market economies combined with rational contraints on wealth concentration and a sober, data driven welfare state. I just don't know if we are going to be able to resist the whack-a-doodle right while keeping the left whack-a-doodles under control.

[Threviel]

Free trade and globalisation is not necessarily a neo-con thing. The creation of the EU for example is as much social democrat as liberal and not especially conservative.

Lowered taxes and de-regulation is what I mostly associate with the neo-cons.

So yeah, we've made great progress, but how much of that is due to lowered taxation and de-regulation?

[Berkut]

Free trade and globalisation is not necessarily a neo-con thing. The creation of the EU for example is as much social democrat as liberal and not especially conservative.

Lowered taxes and de-regulation is what I mostly associate with the neo-cons.

So yeah, we've made great progress, but how much of that is due to lowered taxation and de-regulation?

I doubt any of it is due to those things.

I think it is mostly the free market (which I do not think means no regulation. It does mean careful regulation, and it can certainly be stifled by too much regulation), technology, and the continued penetration of liberal ideals around education equal rights.

[Sheilbh]

Free trade and globalisation is not necessarily a neo-con thing. The creation of the EU for example is as much social democrat as liberal and not especially conservative.

Lowered taxes and de-regulation is what I mostly associate with the neo-cons.

So yeah, we've made great progress, but how much of that is due to lowered taxation and de-regulation?

I think it's more neo-liberal than neo-con. I always thought the neo-cons were the "invade countries and turn them into democracies" line, where neo-liberalism (and they're all dodgy terms) was basically a strong state (which liberalism always needs) that tends to be intolerant of other sources of power such as unions, market reforms that particularly emphasised the free flow of goods and capital, as well as monetary discipline (with austerity or "internal devaluation" instead of devaluation as the way out). Reagan and Thatcher are a big part of it, but it starts with Pinochet I think as the example.

And the EU in the last decade: a hard, ruthless border (over 1,000 dead a year in the Med, border fences, drones, push-backs, experimental AI to detect whether migrants are lying) and enforced austerity at the expense of democratic politics. It seems the perfect project of the age. That doesn't mean that it's inherent in the EU to have those policies - any more than it's inherent in a state to have certain policies - but I certainly don't think it's had a social democratic decade.

I think it was tangled up with the general "end of history" triumphalism. I think the model isn't broken necessarily - it is just this is what it looks like after 40-50 years. My view is that we are at the end of neo-liberalism and the "end of history" and not moving to a new model (my guess would be a more activist, redistributionist big state - but that could be very wrong. I think the Gramsci line is very accurage: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

[Threviel]

Free trade and globalisation is not necessarily a neo-con thing. The creation of the EU for example is as much social democrat as liberal and not especially conservative.

Lowered taxes and de-regulation is what I mostly associate with the neo-cons.

So yeah, we've made great progress, but how much of that is due to lowered taxation and de-regulation?

I doubt any of it is due to those things.

I think it is mostly the free market (which I do not think means no regulation. It does mean careful regulation, and it can certainly be stifled by too much regulation), technology, and the continued penetration of liberal ideals around education equal rights.

Yes, that is my point. My thinking is changing and I'm coming to the idea that lowered taxes is not worth any price, we should have spent the resources on bettering our societies. It wouldn't have taken much to better a lot of the problems in society. I used to think that's what we were doing when we created growth, jobs and new resources. A lot of people missed the train even if almost everyones lives have improved drastically.

It's all relative. I'm happy with my old Subaru until my neighbour gets a new Jaguar. Sure, nothing has changed for me and I have a new TV, but I'm relatively worse of since my neighbour is so much better off than me.

That's what I missed. I thought that it was enough for everyone to have better lives without understanding that it's the relative wealth that matters.

[Admiral Yi]

where neo-liberalism (and they're all dodgy terms) was basically a strong state (which liberalism always needs) that tends to be intolerant of other sources of power such as unions

That's a very Squeezian spin on neo-liberalism.

[Sheilbh]

That's a very Squeezian spin on neo-liberalism.

Okay?

It's not the only bit - I think state/power, market deregulation and monetary power and I think they all interlock.

[Admiral Yi]

I think the opposite.  Removing the state from market functions is a surrendering of state power, not an augmentation of it.  It's the dirigistes who can be described as interested in state power.

[Sheilbh]

I think the opposite.  Removing the state from market functions is a surrendering of state power, not an augmentation of it.  It's the dirigistes who can be described as interested in state power.

I think there's a difference between a big and a strong state.

The market functioning in that way tends to rely on a strong state to enforce your rights obtained in the market and to disrupt those - such as unions or, in Chile, the indigenous communities - who basically be trying to interrupt the smooth, purely market based allocation of wealth. Liberalism's always required that - or a privatised form of security.

In addition - I don't know about Reagan - but in Thatcher's Britain public services were not generally well funded, with the exception of the police and often on hefty overtime during, say, the miners' strike. The security wing of the state was essential in confronting the unions but also in dealing with riots and civil unrest in response to the "shock therapy" moment - in the UK there were riots all over the country as unemployment, inflation and interest rates hit record highes in the early 80s.

[Admiral Yi]

Well you and I certainly have different ways of seeing things.

In my knowledge of labor history, the police were involved in breaking up strikes during the Great Depression, not so much since then, at least in the US.  There certainly was a decided turn to "law and order" after the tumult of the 70's, but that was focused more on thing like drugs and making streets and subways safe, as Guiliani did in NYC.

I am also unaware of any police involvement in the UK miners' strike, but I could be wrong.

[Sheilbh]

I am also unaware of any police involvement in the UK miners' strike, but I could be wrong.

It's pretty iconic:



And hundreds of PATCO strikers were detained by the police over the course of their strike - which was the big confrontation in Reagan's administration. I think Alan Greenspan said it was possibly the most important domestic policy decision by Reagan.

[grumbler]

And hundreds of PATCO strikers were detained by the police over the course of their strike - which was the big confrontation in Reagan's administration. I think Alan Greenspan said it was possibly the most important domestic policy decision by Reagan.

The PATCO strike was a bit unusual in that the air controllers had, as part of the contract, a no-strike clause.  When they went out on strike, the had none of the protections striking workers normally enjoy, because the strike was illegal.

It is a shame, IMO, that the actions of a few overweening unions so thoroughly turned the public against what were useful institutions in the form of unions.