Finally finished reading David Harvey’s 2005 text A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
I started this book way back in … well, I’m not sure … a few years ago. Finally picked it back up and behold, this describes so much of the last 20 years. My margins are full of … “Elon Musk & Twitter” or “2008 recession!” or “and so we have strikes today.”
Below are some quotes that together give a summary of the book. Basically, we’re an oligarchy because of the neoliberal fundamental belief that government should protect property and capital above everything. The world is on fire, literally and metaphorically, democracy is on the wane, and most of us are worse off than we were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
Did you know that the average wage during the Great Depression would be roughly $85,000 in today’s dollars? Yet, the national wage average is $55,000. We’ve got some work to do. Not that we never had the work to do, but the last 40-50 years of neoliberalism and neoconservativism have set us back. The US is an oligarchy using colonial, neocolonial, and imperial tactics to divide and conquer. It’s getting worse.
Harvey used the word trump so many times, enough that it started feeling a bit too on the nose.
So, the question is : will we work together to build a more perfect union?