superrific
Legend of ZZL
- Messages
- 8,871
I'm not going to get into an argument about Obamacare versus Social Security. I will just say that neoliberalism didn't create the Obamacare features that you are criticizing. Joe Lieberman did. Obama had 57 Senators or so ready to go with the Obamacare + public option. But he needed 60 because of the filibuster, and Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman wouldn't play ball. They were holdouts, in large measure protecting their states' bigger employers.Social Security is the model. A no frills program that everyone loves and is universal.
Obamacare is the opposite. A means tested, private partnership that most people don’t even understand is a government benefit.
It’s a failure of messaging and imagination. FDR showed millions of Americans that the federal government could provide material advances in living standards.
Going back to the heart of this argument, neoliberalism has created many more Obamacares than social securities.
Think about how something like a universal child care program provided by the government free of cost could make people change their minds about what government does and what is possible.
This is because of the neoliberal frame of mind that has been beat into people’s heads by the right and the Democratic Party: government bad, private business good.
The filibuster did the work that you ascribe to "neoliberalism." I favor eliminating the filibuster. But the Senate has, for reasons that I don't totally understand, been reluctant (to put it mildly) to do so.
Private business tends to be more efficient than government at providing goods and services. That's why everywhere in the globe, prosperity is the result of private business. China became prosperous after Deng allowed for markets and private industry. India became more prosperous after lifting the heavy regulations and government involvement that had stultified growth for a generation. So on and so forth. The so-called Washington Consensus gets slammed by lefties for its high-profile failures (e.g. Argentina) but the reason the Consensus existed in the first place was that the policies espoused had worked in so many places (and continues to work).
Government should get involved in cases of market failures or market imperfections. That doesn't mean it has to be the producer. The history of state control over enterprise is not an encouraging one. It is better for the government to write rules, and the more perilous the market (e.g. health care), the more stringent rules are needed.