Category Archives: Liberal

Beit Hillel says women are fully permitted and able to give rulings in Jewish law. (photo credit:YUVAL BEN-YEHUDA)

Several institutions and rabbinical leaders from the liberal wing of the religious-Zionist community in Israel have questioned the wisdom of the OUs recent decision not to allow women to give rulings in Jewish law or otherwise participate in the clergy or positions of public spiritual leadership.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Yehudah Gilad, a member of the board of directors of Beit Hillel, started by saying he believed elements of the OU decision were a step forward, including its embrace of women participating in pastoral roles within Jewish communities as teachers and lay leaders.

Although insisting that it was not Beit Hillels position to criticize decisions of Jewish communal organizations in the US, Gilad said that there were aspects of the OUs rabbinical position paper on the issue with which he disagreed personally.

In particular, he pointed out that the OUs document did not bring any concrete sources which ban women from undertaking one of the most critical functions of a rabbi, issuing rulings on Jewish law, halacha.

The reason is that it is very hard to find an authoritative source who banned women from issuing halachic rulings, Gilad said simply.

The phenomenon of women who are arbiters of Jewish law is growing and we should welcome it and guide it within the halachic framework.

He noted that Beit Hillel issued a position statement two years ago specifically endorsing the legitimacy of women to give halachic rulings, although noting that the organization nevertheless does not endorse women leading communal religious services, being part of a prayer quorum and other functions which Jewish law does prohibit.

But we should welcome and support women carrying functions in rabbinical position which do not contradict halacha as long as it does in a moderate, delicate way and with consideration with of the community, said Gilad.

Women serving in such a manner in synagogue communities as assistant rabbis was an example of how they could fulfill such roles, he said.

Rabbi Benny Lau, who heads the Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem that recently appointed a female spiritual leader to serve alongside him, described the OUs position paper as expressing weakness and fear, instead of welcoming the adoption by women of communal spiritual responsibilities.

On every page of the document (14 pages!) one can discern worry about bringing in women to positions of communal spiritual leadership, as if there is some kind of competition over hegemony and control, wrote Lau on his Facebook page.

This train of the integration of women in the work of spiritual leadership of the community has already started its journey and is not waiting for the position papers of organizations to approve or prohibit this journey. The question is if those organizations will be relevant for the next generation or if they will be left on the side of the tracks by the old, forgotten train station.

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Liberal Orthodox rabbis oppose OU ban on female religious leadership - Jerusalem Post Israel News

(Update: Adding voices of other critics)

The unlikely battle over the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as President Trumps nominee for education secretary is becoming even more pitched in the final days before a Senate vote with the airing of hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertisements attacking extreme liberals full of rage and hate who oppose her while protests against her were being staged around the country.

The controversy over the nomination of DeVos, a Michigan billionaire, is the most ferocious of any education secretary in the nearly 40-year history of the Education Department, and of any Trump nominee and it is only likely to deepen until there is a vote early next week on the Senate floor. The vote stands, it is believed, at 50-50, including two Republicans who have come out against DeVos despite enormous pressure from the GOP to support her. If no senator changes position, Vice President Pence would have to break the tie to confirm her.

Republican leaders and a White House spokesman said they are sure she will be confirmed, but her opponents are still hoping to persuade one Republican senator to switch sides this weekend. Senate offices in Washington and in the states have been swamped with phone calls and emails in some cases unprecedented numbers.

Supporters of DeVos say that she is a champion of school choice who wants to help students find the best educational opportunities and that the opposition is coming from partisan Democrats playing politics. Her critics say that her advocacy for charter schools and vouchers and support for religious schools shows her determination to privatize public education and that she is out of the mainstream even in the school choice world, evidenced by opposition to her from many supporters of school choice.

In the final days before the vote, the wrangling over the nomination is increasing and taking some unusual turns.

Advertisements began running on television in support of DeVos, with one of them saying:

Why is the radical left so full of rage and hate? They still cant accept that Trump won and they lost. Now extreme liberals like Elizabeth Warren are trying to stop Betsy DeVos from becoming secretary of education. DeVos angers the extreme left because she exposes their hypocrisy. DeVos wants low-income kids to have the same choices that liberal elitists have for their families. DeVos wants equal opportunity in education for all kids, and that makes angry liberals even angrier.

The ads are being paid for by a conservative group called America Next, which has both ads posted on its website, and is led by Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor who had a short-lived campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The group is spending, according to Politico, a half-million dollars on the ads. They follow a digital pro-DeVos advertising campaign launched by America Rising Squared an arm of the Republican super PAC America Rising.

Although supporters of DeVos blame the opposition on Democrats and the two teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, critics come from the political spectrum.

Some conservative Republicans oppose her in part because they say she supports the Common Core State Standards, though she says she doesnt; she is a strong ally of former Florida governor Jeb Bush who was a big Core supporter for years.

Parents with children with disabilities have come out against her, saying they dont believe she will protect their interests, and many school choice supporters, such as billionaire Eli Broad, who would have been expected to support her are in fact opposing her, saying they dont think she believes in public education. She says she does.

Hundreds of students and graduates from the Christian college she attended, Calvin College, wrote against her nomination too, saying she isnt qualified and didnt care enough about public schools.

Public education advocates, including parents and teachers, oppose the nomination, including the Network for Public Education and the Badass Teachers Association. Some of their members have been critical of the teachers unions.

Sandra Stotsky, no fan of the unions, opposes DeVoss nomination because she believes DeVos is a supporter of the Common Core, despite her statement that she isnt. Stotsky is professor emerita in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and a strong critic of the Common Core State Standards. She had developed one of the countrys strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students while serving as senior associate commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003. Stotsky points to parent groups who have come out against DeVos because of the Common Core. For example, the South Dakota Citizens for Liberty wrote in a letter to Trump:

Your Secretary of Education Nominee, Betsy DeVos, has stated her position as being against Common Core, yet she has been a leader in pushing it, as have many other well-intentioned people. She champions Choice and Accountability. But if Choice is only among COMMON CORE compliant programs, the reality is, THIS IS NOT TRUE CHOICE.

Meanwhile protests are being held in cities across the country this weekend, some of them organized by teachers unions, to try to persuade at least one Republican senator to vote against her, which would tank the nomination. Among the protests on Saturday was one in Denver outside the office of Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), urging him to vote against he, and one in Verona, N.J., where hundreds gathered to protest DeVos:

On Friday, a few hundred people protested in front of the west Omaha offices of Sen. Deb Fischer(R-Neb.), asking her to do the same. Fischer was one Republican that DeVos critics had hoped would buck the GOP leadership on the vote because she has stated that she opposes vouchers, which DeVos supports, and is a strong supporter of public education, but the senator came out in support of DeVos.

There were protests in Kansas by teachers, parents and others urging Sen. Jerry Moran (R) to change his mind after he came out in support of DeVos, and in Philadelphia, protesters appeared at the offices of Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) to try to persuade him to reverse his decision to vote for her. He said he wouldnt.

One teacher, Katherine Fritz, noting that DeVos had donated $55,800 to Toomeys campaign, started a tongue-in-cheek $60,050 fundraising effort to pay for Toomeys vote on GoFundMe.com. She actually got more than that, over$66,000 from almost4,000 people in two days, the website says. She wrote:

Betsy DeVos has never set foot in a classroom, did not send her children to public school, cannot distinguish between proficiency and growth, and thinks that guns should be allowed in schools in the event of grizzly attacks. That fictitious grizzly is about as qualified as Ms. DeVos to run the Department of Education.

If Betsy DeVos can buy Senator Toomeys vote, we should be allowed to do the same.

If, of course, Senator Toomey does not wish to accept any funds raised*, all money will be donated to Camp Sojourner, the Pennsylvania Arts Education Network, and the Childrens Literacy Initiative.

Other people started a GoFundMe.com campaigns to buy the votes of other senators who had accepted donations from DeVos, including Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

In Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, a woman named Julia Silge couldnt get through to the office of her senator, Orrin G. Hatch (R), for weeks to talk about DeVos, so she bought a ham-and-pineapple pizza and tried to get it delivered to the office with a note saying, From a Salt Lake constituent in 84105: Please vote NO on Betsy DeVos. She is an inappropriate choice to lead our public schools.

Alas, it didnt get through, but the office saw the pizza order after she posted it on Twitter, the newspaper said.

A new element has entered the debate about DeVos whether the opposition to DeVos is sexist. The line goes that DeVos is being attacked by critics for being clueless about key education issues, which she displayed during her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing but other Cabinet nominees who have known next to nothing about their portfolios have been confirmed, such as neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who said he wasnt qualified to run a federal government department before he decided to accept Trumps offer to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, Nikki Haley wasnt exactly an expert on foreign affairs when she, as governor of South Carolina, was tapped by Trump and confirmed by the Senate to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

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Pro-DeVos ads air, saying 'liberal' critics are full of 'rage and hate,' as anti-DeVos protests are held - Washington Post

Ottawa Sun

Mona Fortier wins Liberal nomination for Ottawa-Vanier byelection Ottawa Sun According to Braeden Caley, the Liberal party's senior director of communications, the nomination meeting was on track to be the largest in Eastern Ontario in 30 years. Norm Newton has been a Liberal since high school, and was at the nomination meeting ... Mona Fortier wins Ottawa-Vanier Liberal nominationiPolitics.ca (subscription) Communications consultant Fortier wins hotly-contested Liberal nomination in Ottawa-Vanier with 1006 votesHill Times (subscription) Photos: Liberal candidate meeting for Ottawa-Vanier byelectionOttawa Citizen CBC.ca all 8 news articles »

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Mona Fortier wins Liberal nomination for Ottawa-Vanier byelection - Ottawa Sun

This article is about the modern Australian political party. For the Liberal party active in Australia from 1909 to 1916, see Commonwealth Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party of Australia (Lib or colloquially Libs) is a major political party in Australia. Founded in 1945 to replace the United Australia Party (UAP), the Liberal Party is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

The Liberal Party is the largest and dominant party in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia, the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory and the Liberal National Party of Queensland. Except for a few short periods, the Liberal Party and its predecessors have operated in similar coalitions since the 1920s. Internationally, the Liberal Party is affiliated to the International Democrat Union.

The party's leader is Malcolm Turnbull and its deputy leader is Julie Bishop. The pair were elected to their positions at the September 2015 Liberal leadership ballot, Bishop was returned to the position of deputy leader and Turnbull as a replacement for Tony Abbott, whom he consequently succeeded as Prime Minister of Australia. Now the Turnbull Government, the party had been elected at the 2013 federal election as the Abbott Government which took office on 18 September 2013.[3] At state and territory level, the Liberal Party is in office in three states: Colin Barnett has been Premier of Western Australia since 2008, Will Hodgman Premier of Tasmania since 2014 and Gladys Berejiklian Premier of New South Wales since 2017. The party is in opposition in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory.

The party's ideology has been referred to as conservative,[4]liberal-conservative,[5] and conservative-liberal.[6] The Liberal Party tends to promote economic liberalism and social conservatism.[7] Two past leaders of the party, Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard, are Australia's two longest-serving Prime Ministers. The Liberal Party has spent more time in government than any other federal Australian political party.

The contemporary Liberal Party generally advocates economic liberalism (see New Right). Historically, the party has supported a higher degree of economic protectionism and interventionism than it has in recent decades. However, from its foundation the party has identified itself as anti-socialist. Strong opposition to socialism and communism in Australia and abroad was one of its founding principles. The party's founder and longest-serving leader Robert Menzies envisaged that Australia's middle class would form its main constituency.[8]

Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister of Australia, in a final address to the Liberal Party Federal Council in 1964, Menzies spoke of the "Liberal Creed" as follows:

As the etymology of our name 'Liberal' indicates, we have stood for freedom. We have realised that men and women are not just ciphers in a calculation, but are individual human beings whose individual welfare and development must be the main concern of government ... We have learned that the right answer is to set the individual free, to aim at equality of opportunity, to protect the individual against oppression, to create a society in which rights and duties are recognised and made effective.

Soon after the election of the Howard Government the new Prime Minister John Howard, who was to become the second-longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, spoke of his interpretation of the "Liberal Tradition" in a Robert Menzies Lecture in 1996:

Menzies knew the importance for Australian Liberalism to draw upon both the classical liberal as well as the conservative political traditions. ... He believed in a liberal political tradition that encompassed both Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill a tradition which I have described in contemporary terms as the broad church of Australian Liberalism.

Throughout their history, the Liberals have been in electoral terms largely the party of the middle class (whom Menzies, in the era of the party's formation called "The forgotten people"), though such class-based voting patterns are no longer as clear as they once were. In the 1970s a left-wing middle class emerged that no longer voted Liberal.[citation needed] One effect of this was the success of a breakaway party, the Australian Democrats, founded in 1977 by former Liberal minister Don Chipp and members of minor liberal parties; other members of the left-leaning section of the middle-class became Labor supporters.[citation needed] On the other hand, the Liberals have done increasingly well in recent years among socially conservative working-class voters.[citation needed]However the Liberal Party's key support base remains the upper-middle classes; 16 of the 20 richest federal electorates are held by the Liberals, most of which are safe seats.[10] In country areas they either compete with or have a truce with the Nationals, depending on various factors.

Menzies was an ardent constitutional monarchist, who supported the Monarchy in Australia and links to the Commonwealth of Nations. Today the party is divided on the question of republicanism, with some (such as incumbent leader Malcolm Turnbull) being republicans, while others (such as his predecessor Tony Abbott) are monarchists. The Menzies Government formalised Australia's alliance with America in 1951, and the party has remained a strong supporter of the mutual defence treaty.

Domestically, Menzies presided over a fairly regulated economy in which utilities were publicly owned, and commercial activity was highly regulated through centralised wage-fixing and high tariff protection. Liberal leaders from Menzies to Malcolm Fraser generally maintained Australia's high tariff levels. At that time the Liberals' coalition partner, the Country Party, the older of the two in the coalition (now known as the "National Party"), had considerable influence over the government's economic policies. It was not until the late 1970s and through their period out of power federally in the 1980s that the party came to be influenced by what was known as the "New Right" a conservative liberal group who advocated market deregulation, privatisation of public utilities, reductions in the size of government programs and tax cuts.

Socially, while liberty and freedom of enterprise form the basis of its beliefs, elements of the party have wavered between what is termed "small-l liberalism" and social conservatism. Historically, Liberal Governments have been responsible for the carriage of a number of notable "socially liberal" reforms, including the opening of Australia to multiethnic immigration under Menzies and Harold Holt; Holt's 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal Rights;[11]Sir John Gorton's support for cinema and the arts;[12] selection of the first Aboriginal Senator, Neville Bonner, in 1971;[13] and Malcolm Fraser's Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. A West Australian Liberal, Ken Wyatt, became the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.[14]

The party has mainly two unorganised factions, the conservative right and the moderate left. Historically, moderates have at times formed their own parties, most notably the Australian Democrats who gave voice to what is termed small-l liberalism in Australia.

The Liberal Party is a member of the International Democrat Union, the only party with the name Liberal to hold membership.

The Liberal Party's organisation is dominated by the six state divisions, reflecting the party's original commitment to a federalised system of government (a commitment which was strongly maintained by all Liberal governments until 1983, but was to a large extent abandoned by the Howard Government, which showed strong centralising tendencies). Menzies deliberately created a weak national party machine and strong state divisions. Party policy is made almost entirely by the parliamentary parties, not by the party's rank-and-file members, although Liberal party members do have a degree of influence over party policy.[15]

The Liberal Party's basic organisational unit is the branch, which consists of party members in a particular locality. For each electorate there is a conferencenotionally above the brancheswhich coordinates campaigning in the electorate and regularly communicates with the member (or candidate) for the electorate. As there are three levels of government in Australia, each branch elects delegates to a local, state, and federal conference.[15]

All the branches in an Australian state are grouped into a Division. The ruling body for the Division is a State Council. There is also one Federal Council which represents the entire organisational Liberal Party in Australia. Branch executives are delegates to the Councils ex-officio and additional delegates are elected by branches, depending on their size.[15]

Preselection of electoral candidates is performed by a special electoral college convened for the purpose. Membership of the electoral college consists of head office delegates, branch officers, and elected delegates from branches.[15]

The Liberals' immediate predecessor was the United Australia Party (UAP). More broadly, the Liberal Party's ideological ancestry stretched back to the anti-Labor groupings in the first Commonwealth parliaments. The Commonwealth Liberal Party was a fusion of the Free Trade Party and the Protectionist Party in 1909 by the second prime minister, Alfred Deakin, in response to Labor's growing electoral prominence. The Commonwealth Liberal Party merged with several Labor dissidents (including Billy Hughes) to form the Nationalist Party of Australia in 1917. That party, in turn, merged with Labor dissidents to form the UAP in 1931.

The UAP had been formed as a new conservative alliance in 1931, with Labor defector Joseph Lyons as its leader. The stance of Lyons and other Labor rebels against the more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal the Great Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives.[16] With Australia still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, the newly formed party won a landslide victory at the 1931 Election, and the Lyons Government went on to win three consecutive elections. It largely avoided Keynesian pump-priming and pursued a more conservative fiscal policy of debt reduction and balanced budgets as a means of stewarding Australia out of the Depression. Lyons' death in 1939 saw Robert Menzies assume the Prime Ministership on the eve of war. Menzies served as Prime Minister from 1939 to 1941 but resigned as leader of the minority World War II government amidst an unworkable parliamentary majority. The UAP, led by Billy Hughes, disintegrated after suffering a heavy defeat in the 1943 election.

Menzies called a conference of conservative parties and other groups opposed to the ruling Australian Labor Party, which met in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury, New South Wales in December 1944.[17][18] From 1942 onward Menzies had maintained his public profile with his series of "The Forgotten People" radio talkssimilar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" of the 1930sin which he spoke of the middle class as the "backbone of Australia" but as nevertheless having been "taken for granted" by political parties.[19][20]

Outlining his vision for a new political movement in 1944, Menzies said:

...[W]hat we must look for, and it is a matter of desperate importance to our society, is a true revival of liberal thought which will work for social justice and security, for national power and national progress, and for the full development of the individual citizen, though not through the dull and deadening process of socialism.

The formation of the party was formally announced at Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945.[18] It took the name "Liberal" in honour of the old Commonwealth Liberal Party. The new party was dominated by the remains of the old UAP; with few exceptions, the UAP party room became the Liberal party room. The Australian Women's National League, a powerful conservative women's organisation, also merged with the new party. A conservative youth group Menzies had set up, the Young Nationalists, was also merged into the new party. It became the nucleus of the Liberal Party's youth division, the Young Liberals. By September 1945 there were more than 90,000 members, many of whom had not previously been members of any political party.[18]

After an initial loss to Labor at the 1946 election, Menzies led the Liberals to victory at the 1949 election, and the party stayed in office for a record 23 yearsstill the longest unbroken run in government at the federal level. Australia experienced prolonged economic growth during the post-war boom period of the Menzies Government (19491966) and Menzies fulfilled his promises at the 1949 election to end rationing of butter, tea and petrol and provided a five-shilling endowment for first-born children, as well as for others.[22] While himself an unashamed anglophile, Menzies' government concluded a number of major defence and trade treaties that set Australia on its post-war trajectory out of Britain's orbit; opened Australia to multi-ethnic immigration; and instigated important legal reforms regarding Aboriginal Australians.

Menzies ran strongly against Labor's plans to nationalise the Australian banking system and, following victory in the 1949 election, secured a double dissolution election for April 1951, after the Labor-controlled Senate refused to pass his banking legislation. The Liberal-Country Coalition was returned with control of the Senate. The Government was returned again in the 1954 election; the formation of the anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the consequent split in the Australian Labor Party early in 1955 helped the Liberals to another victory in December 1955. John McEwen replaced Arthur Fadden as leader of the Country Party in March 1958 and the Menzies-McEwen Coalition was returned again at elections in November 1958 their third victory against Labor's H. V. Evatt. The Coalition was narrowly returned against Labor's Arthur Calwell in the December 1961 election, in the midst of a credit squeeze. Menzies stood for office for the last time in the November 1963 election, again defeating Calwell, with the Coalition winning back its losses in the House of Representatives. Menzies went on to resign from parliament on 26 January 1966.[23]

Menzies came to power the year the Communist Party of Australia had led a coal strike to improve pit miners' working conditions. That same year Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and Mao Zedong led the Communist Party of China to power in China; a year later came the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea. Anti-communism was a key political issue of the 1950s and 1960s.[24] Menzies was firmly anti-Communist; he committed troops to the Korean War and attempted to ban the Communist Party of Australia in an unsuccessful referendum during the course of that war. The Labor Party split over concerns about the influence of the Communist Party over the Trade Union movement, leading to the foundation of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party whose preferences supported the Liberal and Country parties.[25]

In 1951, during the early stages of the Cold War, Menzies spoke of the possibility of a looming third world war. The Menzies Government entered Australia's first formal military alliance outside of the British Commonwealth with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in San Francisco in 1951. External Affairs Minister Percy Spender had put forward the proposal to work along similar lines to the NATO Alliance. The Treaty declared that any attack on one of the three parties in the Pacific area would be viewed as a threat to each, and that the common danger would be met in accordance with each nation's constitutional processes. In 1954 the Menzies Government signed the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (SEATO) as a South East Asian counterpart to NATO. That same year, Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov and his wife defected from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, revealing evidence of Russian spying activities; Menzies called a Royal Commission to investigate.[26]

In 1956 a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies pumped funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities.

Menzies continued the expanded immigration program established under Chifley, and took important steps towards dismantling the White Australia Policy. In the early 1950s, external affairs minister Percy Spender helped to establish the Colombo Plan for providing economic aid to underdeveloped nations in Australia's region. Under that scheme many future Asian leaders studied in Australia.[27] In 1958 the government replaced the Immigration Act's arbitrarily applied European language dictation test with an entry permit system, that reflected economic and skills criteria.[28][29] In 1962, Menzies' Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections (prior to this, indigenous people in Queensland, Western Australia and some in the Northern Territory had been excluded from voting unless they were ex-servicemen).[30] In 1949 the Liberals appointed Dame Enid Lyons as the first woman to serve in an Australian Cabinet. Menzies remained a staunch supporter of links to the monarchy and British Commonwealth but formalised an alliance with the United States and concluded the Agreement on Commerce between Australia and Japan which was signed in July 1957 and launched post-war trade with Japan, beginning a growth of Australian exports of coal, iron ore and mineral resources that would steadily climb until Japan became Australia's largest trading partner.

Menzies retired in 1966 as Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister.

Harold Holt replaced the retiring Robert Menzies in 1966 and the Holt Government went on to win 82 seats to Labor's 41 in the 1966 election.[31] Holt remained Prime Minister until 19 December 1967, when he was declared presumed dead two days after disappearing in rough surf in which he had gone for a swim.

Holt increased Australian commitment to the growing War in Vietnam, which met with some public opposition. His government oversaw conversion to decimal currency. Holt faced Britain's withdrawal from Asia by visiting and hosting many Asian leaders and by expanding ties to the United States, hosting the first visit to Australia by an American president, his friend Lyndon B. Johnson. Holt's government introduced the Migration Act 1966, which effectively dismantled the White Australia Policy and increased access to non-European migrants, including refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. Holt also called the 1967 Referendum which removed the discriminatory clause in the Australian Constitution which excluded Aboriginal Australians from being counted in the census the referendum was one of the few to be overwhelmingly endorsed by the Australian electorate (over 90% voted 'yes'). By the end of 1967, the Liberals' initially popular support for the war in Vietnam was causing increasing public protest.[32]

The Liberals chose John Gorton to replace Holt. Gorton, a former World War II Royal Australian Air Force pilot, with a battle scarred face, said he was "Australian to the bootheels" and had a personal style which often affronted some conservatives.

The Gorton Government increased funding for the arts, setting up the Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation and the National Film and Television Training School. The Gorton Government passed legislation establishing equal pay for men and women and increased pensions, allowances and education scholarships, as well as providing free health care to 250,000 of the nation's poor (but not universal health care). Gorton's government kept Australia in the Vietnam War but stopped replacing troops at the end of 1970.[33]

Gorton maintained good relations with the United States and Britain, but pursued closer ties with Asia. The Gorton government experienced a decline in voter support at the 1969 election. State Liberal leaders saw his policies as too Centralist, while other Liberals didn't like his personal behaviour. In 1971, Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser, resigned and said Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister". In a vote on the leadership the Liberal Party split 50/50, and although this was insufficient to remove him as the leader, Gorton decided this was also insufficient support for him, and he resigned.[33]

Former treasurer, William McMahon, replaced Gorton as Prime Minister. Gorton remained a front bencher but relations with Fraser remained strained. The McMahon Government ended when Gough Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party out of its 23-year period in Opposition at the 1972 election.

The economy was weakening. McMahon maintained Australia's diminishing commitment to Vietnam and criticised Opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, for visiting Communist China in 1972only to have the US President Richard Nixon announce a planned visit soon after.[34]

During McMahon's period in office, Neville Bonner joined the Senate and became the first Indigenous Australian in the Australian Parliament.[35] Bonner was chosen by the Liberal Party to fill a Senate vacancy in 1971 and celebrated his maiden parliamentary speech with a boomerang throwing display on the lawns of Parliament. Bonner went on to win election at the 1972 election and served as a Liberal Senator for 12 years. He worked on Indigenous and social welfare issues and proved an independent minded Senator, often crossing the floor on Parliamentary votes.[36]

Following Whitlam's victory, John Gorton played a further role in reform by introducing a Parliamentary motion from Opposition supporting the legalisation of same-gender sexual relations. Billy Snedden led the party against Whitlam in the 1974 federal election, which saw a return of the Labor government. When Malcolm Fraser won the Liberal Party leadership from Snedden in 1975, Gorton walked out of the Party Room.[37]

Following the 197475 Loans Affair, the Malcolm Fraser led Liberal-Country Party Coalition argued that the Whitlam Government was incompetent and delayed passage of the Government's money bills in the Senate, until the government would promise a new election. Whitlam refused, Fraser insisted leading to the divisive 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. The deadlock came to an end when the Whitlam government was dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 and Fraser was installed as caretaker Prime Minister, pending an election. Fraser won in a landslide at the resulting 1975 election.

Fraser maintained some of the social reforms of the Whitlam era, while seeking increased fiscal restraint. His government included the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian, Neville Bonner, and in 1976, Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, which, while limited to the Northern Territory, affirmed "inalienable" freehold title to some traditional lands. Fraser established the multicultural broadcaster SBS, accepted Vietnamese refugees, opposed minority white rule in Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and opposed Soviet expansionism. A significant program of economic reform however was not pursued. By 1983, the Australian economy was suffering with the early 1980s recession and amidst the effects of a severe drought. Fraser had promoted "states' rights" and his government refused to use Commonwealth powers to stop the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in 1982.[38] Liberal minister, Don Chipp split off from the party to form a new social liberal party, the Australian Democrats in 1977. Fraser won further substantial majorities at the 1977 and 1980 elections, before losing to the Bob Hawke led Australian Labor Party in the 1983 election.[39]

A period of division for the Liberals followed, with former Treasurer John Howard competing with former Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock for supremacy. The Australian economy was facing the early 1990s recession. Unemployment reached 11.4% in 1992. Under Dr John Hewson, in November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document a radical collection of "dry", economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises representing the start of a very different future direction to the keynesian economic conservatism practiced by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centerpiece of the policy document. Through 1992, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package, and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Pressure group activity and public opinion was relentless, which led Hewson to exempt food from the proposed GST leading to questions surrounding the complexity of what food was and wasn't to be exempt from the GST. Hewson's difficulty in explaining this to the electorate was exemplified in the infamous birthday cake interview, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. Keating won a record fifth consecutive Labor term at the 1993 election. A number of the proposals were later adopted in to law in some form, to a small extent during the Keating Labor government, and to a larger extent during the Howard Liberal government (most famously the GST), while unemployment benefits and bulk billing were re-targeted for a time by the Abbott Liberal government.

At the state level, the Liberals have been dominant for long periods in all states except Queensland, where they have always held fewer seats than the National Party (not to be confused with the old Nationalist Party). The Liberals were in power in Victoria from 1955 to 1982. Jeff Kennett led the party back to office in that state in 1992, and remained Premier until 1999.

In South Australia, initially a Liberal and Country Party affiliated party, the Liberal and Country League (LCL), mostly led by Premier of South Australia Tom Playford, was in power from the 1933 election to the 1965 election, though with assistance from an electoral malapportionment, or gerrymander, known as the Playmander. The LCL's Steele Hall governed for one term from the 1968 election to the 1970 election and during this time began the process of dismantling the Playmander. David Tonkin, as leader of the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, became Premier at the 1979 election for one term, losing office at the 1982 election. The Liberals returned to power at the 1993 election, led by Premiers Dean Brown, John Olsen and Rob Kerin through two terms, until their defeat at the 2002 election. They have since remained in opposition under a record five Opposition Leaders.

The dual aligned Country Liberal Party ruled the Northern Territory from 1978 to 2001.

The party has held office in Western Australia intermittently since 1947. Liberal Richard Court was Premier of the state for most of the 1990s.

In New South Wales, the Liberal Party has not been in office as much as its Labor rival, and just three leaders have led the party from opposition to government in that state: Sir Robert Askin, who was premier from 1965 to 1975, Nick Greiner, who came to office in 1988 and resigned in 1992, and Barry O'Farrell who would lead the party out of 16 years in opposition in 2011.

The Liberal Party does not officially contest most local government elections, although many members do run for office in local government as independents. An exception is the Brisbane City Council, where both Sallyanne Atkinson and Campbell Newman have been elected Lord Mayor of Brisbane.[40]

Labor's Paul Keating lost the 1996 Election to the Liberals' John Howard. The Liberals had been in Opposition for 13 years.[41] With John Howard as Prime Minister, Peter Costello as Treasurer and Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister, the Howard Government remained in power until their electoral defeat to Kevin Rudd in 2007.

Howard generally framed the Liberals as being conservative on social policy, debt reduction and matters like maintaining Commonwealth links and the American Alliance but his premiership saw booming trade with Asia and expanding multiethnic immigration. His government concluded the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement with the Bush Administration in 2004.[35]

Howard differed from his Labor predecessor Paul Keating in that he supported traditional Australian institutions like the Monarchy in Australia, the commemoration of ANZAC Day and the design of the Australian flag, but like Keating he pursued privatisation of public utilities and the introduction of a broad based consumption tax (although Keating had dropped support for a GST by the time of his 1993 election victory). Howard's premiership coincided with Al Qaeda's 11 September attacks on the United States. The Howard Government invoked the ANZUS treaty in response to the attacks and supported America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the 2004 Federal elections the party strengthened its majority in the Lower House and, with its coalition partners, became the first federal government in twenty years to gain an absolute majority in the Senate. This control of both houses permitted their passing of legislation without the need to negotiate with independents or minor parties, exemplified by industrial relations legislation known as WorkChoices, a wide ranging effort to increase deregulation of industrial laws in Australia.

In 2005, Howard reflected on his government's cultural and foreign policy outlook in oft repeated terms:[42]

When I became Prime Minister nine years ago, I believed that this nation was defining its place in the world too narrowly. My Government has rebalanced Australia's foreign policy to better reflect the unique intersection of history, geography, culture and economic opportunity that our country represents. Time has only strengthened my conviction that we do not face a choice between our history and our geography.

John Howard

The 2007 federal election saw the defeat of the Howard federal government, and the Liberal Party was in opposition throughout Australia at the state and federal level; the highest Liberal office-holder at the time was Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman. This ended after the Western Australian state election, 2008, when Colin Barnett became Premier of that state.

Following the 2007 federal election, Dr Brendan Nelson was elected leader by the Parliamentary Liberal Party. On 16 September 2008, in a second contest following a spill motion, Nelson lost the leadership to Malcolm Turnbull.[43] On 1 December 2009, a subsequent leadership election saw Turnbull lose the leadership to Tony Abbott by 42 votes to 41 on the second ballot.[44] Abbott led the party to the 2010 federal election, which saw an increase in the Liberal Party vote and resulted in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election.[45]

Through 2010, the party improved its vote in the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections and achieved state government in Victoria. In March 2011, the New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition led by Barry O'Farrell won government with the largest election victory in post-war Australian history at the State Election.[46] In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties merged in 2008 to form the new Liberal National Party of Queensland (registered as the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party of Australia). In March 2012, the new party achieved Government in an historic landslide, led by former Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman.[47]

The following is a complete list of Liberal Party leaders:

Key: Liberal Labor Country/National PM: Prime Minister LO: Leader of the Opposition : Died in office

1 Queensland is represented by the Liberal National Party of Queensland. This party is the result of a merger of the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party and the Queensland National Party to contest elections as a single party.

2 The Northern Territory is represented by the Country Liberal Party, which is endorsed as the Territory division of the Liberal Party.

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Liberal Party of Australia - Wikipedia

Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism)[1] refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[2]:7 These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980.[10][11] The implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the financial crisis of 200708 as one of the ultimate results.[12][13][14][15][16]

An early use of the term in English was in 1898 by the French economist Charles Gide to describe the economic beliefs of the Italian economist Maffeo Pantaleoni,[17] with the term "no-libralisme" previously existing in French,[18] and the term was later used by others including the economist Milton Friedman in a 1951 essay,[19] but became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences,[20][21] as well as being used by critics.[22][23] Modern advocates of free market policies avoid the term "neoliberal"[24] and some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people,[25][26] as neoliberalism "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world.[3] As such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy.[4]

The definition and usage of the term have changed over time.[4] It was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called 'Third' or 'Middle Way' between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.[27]:145 The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed by neoliberals on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman,[4] along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[28] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[4] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[3] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[21] The impact of the global 200809 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[29]

In 1938 at the Colloque Walter Lippmann, the term "neoliberalism" was proposed, among other terms, and ultimately chosen to be used to describe a certain set of economic beliefs.[27]:123[30] The colloquium defined the concept of neoliberalism as involving "the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state".[27]:134 To be "neoliberal" meant advocating a modern economic policy with state intervention.[27]:48 Neoliberal state interventionism brought a clash with the opposite laissez-faire camp of classical liberals, like Ludwig von Mises.[31] While present-day scholars[who?] tend to identify Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand as the most important theorists of neoliberalism, most scholars in the 1950s and 1960s understood neoliberalism as referring to the social market economy and its principal economic theorists such as Eucken, Rpke, Rstow, and Mller-Armack. Although Hayek had intellectual ties to the German neoliberals, his name was only occasionally mentioned in conjunction with neoliberalism during this period due to his more pro-free market stance.[32]

During the military rule under Augusto Pinochet (19731990) in Chile, opposition scholars took up the expression to describe the economic reforms implemented there and its proponents (the "Chicago Boys").[4] Once this new meaning was established among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[4] According to one study of 148 scholarly articles, neoliberalism is almost never defined but used in several senses to describe ideology, economic theory, development theory, or economic reform policy. It has largely become a term of condemnation employed by critics, and suggests a market fundamentalism closer to the laissez-faire principles of the paleoliberals[who?] than to the ideas of those who originally attended the colloquium. This leaves some controversy as to the precise meaning of the term and its usefulness as a descriptor in the social sciences, especially as the number of different kinds of market economies have proliferated in recent years.[4]

Another center-left movement from modern American liberalism that used the term "Neoliberalism" to describe its ideology formed in the United States in the 1970s. According to David Brooks, prominent neoliberal politicians included Al Gore and Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party of the United States.[33] The neoliberals coalesced around two magazines, The New Republic and the Washington Monthly. The "godfather" of this version of neoliberalism was the journalist Charles Peters[34] who in 1983 published " A Neoliberal's Manifesto."[35]

Shermer argued that the term gained popularity largely among left leaning academics in the 1970s "to describe and decry a late twentieth-century effort by policy makers, think-tank experts, and industrialists to condemn social-democratic reforms and unapologetically implement free-market policies."[36] Neoliberal theory argues that a free market will allow efficiency, economic growth, income distribution, and technological progress to occur. Any state intervention to encourage these phenomena will worsen economic performance.[37]

At a base level we can say that when we make reference to 'neoliberalism', we are generally referring to the new political, economic and social arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility. Most scholars tend to agree that neoliberalism is broadly defined as the extension of competitive markets into all areas of life, including the economy, politics and society.

According to some scholars, neoliberalism is commonly used as a catchphrase and pejorative term, outpacing similar terms such as monetarism, neoconservatism, the Washington Consensus and "market reform" in much scholarly writing,[4] The term has been criticized,[38][39] including by those who often advocate for policies characterized as neoliberal.[16]:74 Historian Daniel Stedman Jones says the term "is too often used as a catch-all shorthand for the horrors associated with globalization and recurring financial crises"[40]:2The Handbook of Neoliberalism posits that the term has "become a means of identifying a seemingly ubiquitous set of market-oriented policies as being largely responsible for a wide range of social, political, ecological and economic problems." Yet the handbook argues to view the term as merely a pejorative or "radical political slogan" is to "reduce its capacity as an analytic frame. If neoliberalism is to serve as a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades then the concept is in need of unpacking."[3] Currently, neoliberalism is most commonly used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers", and reducing state influence on the economy, especially through privatization and austerity.[4] Other scholars note that neoliberalism is associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States.[5]

There are several distinct usages of the term that can be identified:

Sociologists Block and Somers claim there is a dispute over what to call the influence of free market ideas which have been used to justify the retrenchment of New Deal programs and policies over the last thirty years: neoliberalism, laissez-faire or "free market ideology."[41] Others, such as Braedley and Luxton, assert that neoliberalism is a political philosophy which seeks to "liberate" the processes of capital accumulation.[13] In contrast, Piven sees neoliberalism as essentially hyper-capitalism.[42] However, Robert W. McChesney, while defining it as "capitalism with the gloves off," goes on to assert that the term is largely unknown by the general public, particularly in the United States.[43]:78Lester Spence uses the term to critique trends in Black politics, defining neoliberalism as "the general idea that society works best when the people and the institutions within it work or are shaped to work according to market principles."[44]

The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s brought about high unemployment and widespread poverty, and was widely regarded as a failure of economic liberalism. To renew liberalism a group of 25 intellectuals organised the Walter Lippmann Colloquium at Paris in August 1938. It brought together Louis Rougier, Walter Lippmann, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm Rpke and Alexander Rstow among others. Most agreed that the liberalism of laissez faire had failed and that a new liberalism needed to take its place with a major role for the state. Mises and Hayek refused to condemn laissez faire, but all participants were united in their call for a new project they dubbed "neoliberalism."[46]:189 They agreed the Colloquium into a permanent think tank called Centre International dtudes pour la Rnovation du Libralisme based in Paris.

Deep disagreements in the group separated 'true (third way) neoliberals' around Rstow and Lippmann on the one hand and old school liberals around Mises and Hayek on the other. The first group wanted a strong state to supervise, while the second insisted that the only legitimate role for the state was to abolish barriers to market entry. Rstow wrote that Hayek and Mises were relics of the liberalism that caused the Great Depression. Mises denounced the other faction, complaining that Ordoliberalism really meant "ordo-interventionism".[46]:1920

Neoliberalism began accelerating in importance with the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, in 1947, by Friedrich Hayek. The Colloque Walter Lippmann was largely forgotten.[47] The new society brought together the widely scattered free market thinkers and political figures.

Hayek and others believed that classical liberalism had failed because of crippling conceptual flaws and that the only way to diagnose and rectify them was to withdraw into an intensive discussion group of similarly minded intellectuals.[27]:16

With central planning in the ascendancy worldwide and few avenues to influence policymakers, the society served to bring together isolated advocates of liberalism as a "rallying point" as Milton Friedman phrased it. Meeting annually, it would soon be a "kind of international 'who's who' of the classical liberal and neo-liberal intellectuals."[48] While the first conference in 1947 was almost half American, the Europeans concentration dominated by 1951. Europe would remain the epicenter of the community with Europeans dominating the leadership.[27]:167

In the 1960s, Latin American intellectuals began to notice the ideas of ordoliberalism; these intellectuals often used the Spanish term neoliberalismo to refer to this school of thought. They were particularly impressed by the social market economy and the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) in Germany, and speculated about the possibility of accomplishing similar policies in their own countries. Neoliberalism in 1960s meant essentially a philosophy that was more moderate than classical liberalism and favored using state policy to temper social inequality and counter a tendency toward monopoly.[4]

In 1976, the military dictatorship's economic plan, led by Martnez de Hoz, was the first attempt at a Neoliberalist plan in Argentina. They implemented a fiscal austerity plan, whose goal was to reduce money printing and thus inflation. In order to achieve this, salaries were frozen; however, they were unable to reduce inflation, which led to a drop in the real salary of the working class. Also, aiming for a free market, they decided to open the country's borders, so that foreign goods could freely enter the country. Argentina's industry, which had been on the rise for the last 20 years since Frondizi's economic plan, rapidly declined, because it wasn't able to compete with foreign goods. Finally, the deregulation of the financial sector, gave a short-term growth, but then rapidly fell apart when capital fled to US in the Reagan years.[citation needed] Following the measures, there was an increase in poverty from 9% in 1975 to 40% at the end of 1982.[49]

From 1989 to 2001, another Neoliberalist plan was attempted by Domingo Cavallo. This time, the privatization of public services was the main objective of the government; although financial deregulation and open borders to foreign goods were also re-implemented. While some privatizations were welcomed, the majority of them were criticized for not being in the people's best interests. Along with an increased labour market flexibility, the final result of this plan was an unemployment of 25% and 60% of people living under the poverty line, alongside 33 people killed by the police in protests that ended up with the president at that time, Fernando de la Ra, resigning two years before his time as president was completed.[citation needed]

In Australia, neoliberal economic policies are embraced by governments of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party since the 1980s. The governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating from 1983 to 1996 pursued economic liberalisation and a program of micro-economic reform. These governments privatized government corporations, deregulated factor markets, floated the Australian dollar, and reduced trade protection.[50]

Keating, as federal treasurer, implemented a compulsory superannuation guarantee system in 1992 to increase national savings and reduce future government liability for old age pensions.[51] The financing of universities was deregulated, requiring students to contribute to university fees through a repayable loan system known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and encouraging universities to increase income by admitting full-fee-paying students, including foreign students.[52] The admitting of domestic full fee paying students to public universities was stopped in 2009 by the Rudd Labor Government.[53]

In 1955, a select group of Chilean students (later known as the Chicago Boys) were invited to the University of Chicago to pursue postgraduate studies in economics. They worked directly under Friedman and his disciple, Arnold Harberger, while also being exposed to Hayek. When they returned to Chile in the 1960s, they began a concerted effort to spread the philosophy and policy recommendations of the Chicago and Austrian schools, setting up think tanks and publishing in ideologically sympathetic media. Under the military dictatorship headed by Pinochet and severe social repression, the Chicago boys implemented radical economic reform. The latter half of the 1970s witnessed rapid and extensive privatization, deregulation, and reductions in trade barriers. In 1978 policies that would reduce the role of the state and infuse competition and individualism into areas such as labor relations, pensions, health, and education were introduced.[4] These policies resulted in widening inequality as they negatively impacted the wages, benefits and working conditions of Chile's working class.[49][56] According to Chilean economist Alejandro Foxley, by the end of Pinochet's reign around 44% of Chilean families were living below the poverty line.[57] According to Klien, by the late 1980s the economy had stabilized and was growing, but around 45% of the population had fallen into poverty while the wealthiest 10% saw their incomes rise by 83%.[58]

In 1990 the military dictatorship ended. Hayek argued that increased economic freedom had put pressure on the dictatorship over time and increased political freedom. Years earlier he argued that "economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."[59] The Chilean scholars Martnez and Daz rejected this argument, pointing to the long tradition of democracy in Chile. The return of democracy required the defeat of the Pinochet regime, though it had been fundamental in saving capitalism. The essential contribution came from profound mass rebellions, and finally, old party elites using old institutional mechanisms to bring back democracy.[60]

Neoliberal ideas were first implemented in West Germany. The economists around Ludwig Erhard drew on the theories they had developed in the 1930s and 1940s and contributed to West Germanys reconstruction after the Second World War.[61] Erhard was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and in constant contact with other neoliberals. He pointed out that he is commonly classified as neoliberal and that he accepted this classification.[62]

The ordoliberal Freiburg School was more pragmatic. The German neoliberals accepted the classical liberal notion that competition drives economic prosperity, but they argued that a laissez-faire state policy stifles competition as the strong devour the weak since monopolies and cartels could pose a threat to freedom of competition. They supported the creation of a well-developed legal system and capable regulatory apparatus. While still opposed to full-scale Keynesian employment policies or an extensive welfare state, German neoliberal theory was marked by the willingness to place humanistic and social values on par with economic efficiency. Alfred Mller-Armack coined the phrase "social market economy" to emphasize the egalitarian and humanistic bent of the idea.[4] According to Boas and Gans-Morse, Walter Eucken stated that "social security and social justice are the greatest concerns of our time".[4]

Erhard emphasized that the market was inherently social and did not need to be made so.[46] He hoped that growing prosperity would enable the population to manage much of their social security by self-reliance and end the necessity for a widespread welfare state. By the name of Volkskapitalismus there were some efforts to foster private savings. But although average contributions to the public old age insurance were quite small, it remained by far the most important old age income source for a majority of the German population. Therefore, despite liberal rhetoric, the 1950s witnessed what has been called a reluctant expansion of the welfare state. To end widespread poverty among the elderly the pension reform of 1957 brought a significant extension of the German welfare state which already had been established under Otto von Bismarck.[63] Rstow, who had coined the label "neoliberalism", criticized that development tendency and pressed for a more limited welfare program.[46]

Hayek did not like the expression "social market economy", but stated in 1976 that some of his friends in Germany had succeeded in implementing the sort of social order for which he was pleading while using that phrase. However, in Hayek's view the social market economy's aiming for both a market economy and social justice was a muddle of inconsistent aims.[64] Despite his controversies with the German neoliberals at the Mont Pelerin Society, Ludwig von Mises stated that Erhard and Mller-Armack accomplished a great act of liberalism to restore the German economy and called this "a lesson for the US".[65] According to different research, however, Mises believed that the ordoliberals were hardly better than socialists. As an answer to Hans Hellwigs complaints about the interventionist excesses of the Erhard ministry and the ordoliberals, Mises wrote, "I have no illusions about the true character of the politics and politicians of the social market economy." According to Mises, Erhard's teacher, Franz Oppenheimer, "taught more or less the New Frontier line of" President Kennedy's "Harvard consultants (Schlesinger, Galbraith, etc.)".[66]

In Germany, neoliberalism at first was synonymous with both ordoliberalism and social market economy. But over time the original term neoliberalism gradually disappeared since social market economy was a much more positive term and fit better into the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) mentality of the 1950s and 1960s.[46]

Following the death of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping led the country through far ranging market centered reforms, with the slogan of Xiokng, that combined neoliberalism with centralized authoritarianism. These focused on agriculture, industry, education, and science/defense.[67]

During her tenure as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher oversaw a number of neoliberal reforms including tax reduction, reforming exchange rates, deregulation and privatization.[68] These reforms were continued and supported by her successor John Major but although opposed by the Labour Party at the time, were largely left unaltered when the latter came to power in 1997. Instead the Labour government under Tony Blair finished off a variety of uncompleted privatisation and deregulation measures.[69]

David Harvey uses the term neoliberalism to describe Lewis Powell's 1971 confidential memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce.[67] A call to arms to the business community to counter criticism of the free enterprise system, it was a significant factor in the rise of conservative organizations and think-tanks which advocated for neoliberal policies, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academia and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. For Powell, universities were becoming an ideological battleground and recommended the establishment of an intellectual infrastructure to serve as a counterweight to the increasingly popular ideas of Ralph Nader and other opponents of big business.[70][71][72] On the left, neoliberal ideas were developed and widely popularized by John Kenneth Galbraith, while the Chicago School ideas were advanced and repackaged into a progressive, leftist perspective in Lester Thurow's influential 1980 book "The Zero-Sum Society".[73]

Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s, during the Jimmy Carter administration, with deregulation of the trucking, banking, and airline industries.[74][75][76] This trend continued into the 1980s, under the Reagan Administration, which included tax cuts, increased defense spending, financial deregulation and trade deficit expansion.[77] Likewise, concepts of supply-side economics, discussed by the Democrats in the 1970s, culminated in the 1980 Joint Economic Committee report, "Plugging in the Supply Side." This was picked up and advanced by the Reagan administration, with Congress following Reagan's basic proposal and cutting federal income taxes across the board by 25% in 1981.[78]

During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration also embraced neoliberalism[69] by supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, continuing the deregulation of the financial sector through passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the repeal of the GlassSteagall Act, and implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.[77][79][80] The neoliberalism of the Clinton Administration differs from that of Reagan as the former purged it of neoconservative positions on militarism, family values, opposition to multiculturalism and neglect of ecological issues.[68]:501[disputed discuss]

The Austrian School is a school of economic thought which bases its study of economic phenomena on the interpretation and analysis of the purposeful actions of individuals.[81][82][83][84] It derives its name from its origin in late-19th and early-20th century Vienna with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and others.[85]

Among the contributions of the Austrian School to economic theory are the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory, and the formulation of the economic calculation problem.[86] Many theories developed by "first wave" Austrian economists have been absorbed into most mainstream schools of economics. These include Carl Menger's theories on marginal utility, Friedrich von Wieser's theories on opportunity cost, and Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk's theories on time preference, as well as Menger and Bhm-Bawerk's criticisms of Marxian economics. The Austrian School follows an approach, termed methodological individualism, a version of which was codified by Ludwig von Mises and termed "praxeology" in his book published in English as Human Action in 1949.[87]

The former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, speaking of the originators of the School, said in 2000, "the Austrian School have reached far into the future from when most of them practiced and have had a profound and, in my judgment, probably an irreversible effect on how most mainstream economists think in this country."[88] In 1987, Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan told an interviewer, "I have no objections to being called an Austrian. Hayek and Mises might consider me an Austrian but, surely some of the others would not."[89]Republican U.S. congressman Ron Paul stated that he adheres to Austrian School economics and has authored six books which refer to the subject.[90][91] Paul's former economic adviser, investment dealer Peter Schiff,[92] also calls himself an adherent of the Austrian School.[93]Jim Rogers, investor and financial commentator, also considers himself of the Austrian School of economics.[94] Chinese economist Zhang Weiying, who is known in China for his advocacy of free market reforms, supports some Austrian theories such as the Austrian theory of the business cycle.[95]

The Chicago school of economics describes a neoclassical school of thought within the academic community of economists, with a strong focus around the faculty of University of Chicago. Chicago macroeconomic theory rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations.[96] The school is strongly associated with economists such as Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Ronald Coase and Gary Becker.[97]

The school emphasizes non-intervention from government and generally rejects regulation in markets as inefficient with the exception of central bank regulation of the money supply (i.e., monetarism). Although the school's association with neoliberalism is sometimes resisted by its proponents,[96] its emphasis on reduced government intervention in the economy and a laissez-faire ideology have brought about an affiliation between the Chicago school and neoliberal economics.[98][99]

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argued that "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."[59]

Later, in his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman developed the argument that economic freedom, while itself an extremely important component of total freedom, is also a necessary condition for political freedom. He commented that centralized control of economic activities was always accompanied with political repression.

In his view, the voluntary character of all transactions in an unregulated market economy and wide diversity that it permits are fundamental threats to repressive political leaders and greatly diminish power to coerce. Through elimination of centralized control of economic activities, economic power is separated from political power, and the one can serve as counterbalance to the other. Friedman feels that competitive capitalism is especially important to minority groups, since impersonal market forces protect people from discrimination in their economic activities for reasons unrelated to their productivity.[100]

Amplifying Friedman's argument, it has often been pointed out that increasing economic freedoms tend to raise expectations on political freedoms, eventually leading to democracy. Other scholars see the existence of non-democratic yet market-liberal regimes and the undermining of democratic control by market processes as strong evidence that such a general, ahistorical nexus cannot be upheld.[101] Contemporary discussion on the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy shifted to a more historical perspective, studying extent and circumstances of how much the two are mutually dependent, contradictory or incompatible.

Stanley Fish argues that neoliberalization of academic life may promote a narrower and, in his opinion, more accurate definition of academic freedom "as the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to expand it to the point where its goals are infinite." What Fish urges is "not an inability to take political stands, but a refraining from doing so in the name of academic responsibility."[102]

Neoliberalism has received criticism both from the political left as well as the right, in addition to myriad activists and academics.[103]

David Harvey described neoliberalism as a class project, designed to impose class on society through liberalism.[104] Economists Grard Dumnil and Dominique Lvy posit that "the restoration and increase of the power, income, and wealth of the upper classes" are the primary objectives of the neoliberal agenda.[105] Economist David M. Kotz contends that neoliberalism "is based on the thorough domination of labor by capital."[16]:43 The emergence of the 'precariat', a new class facing acute socio-economic insecurity and alienation, has been attributed to the globalization of neoliberalism.[106]

Sociologist Thomas Volscho has argued that the imposition of neoliberalism in the United States arose from a conscious political mobilization by capitalist elites in the 1970s who faced two crises: the legitimacy of capitalism and a falling rate of profitability in industry. Various neoliberal ideologies (such as monetarism and supply-side economics) had been long advanced by elites, translated into policies by the Reagan administration, and ultimately resulted in less governmental regulation and a shift from a tax-financed state to a debt-financed one. While the profitability of industry and the rate of economic growth never recovered to the heyday of the 1960s, the political and economic power of Wall Street and finance capital vastly increased due to the debt-financing of the state."[107]

The invisible hand of the market and the iron fist of the state combine and complement each other to make the lower classes accept desocialized wage labor and the social instability it brings in its wake. After a long eclipse, the prison thus returns to the frontline of institutions entrusted with maintaining the social order.

Several scholars have linked the rise of neoliberalism to unprecedented levels of mass incarceration of the poor in the United States.[2]:3, 346[109][110][111][112] Sociologist Loc Wacquant argues that neoliberal policy for dealing with social instability among economically marginalized populations following the implementation of other neoliberal policies which have allowed for the retrenchment of the social welfare state and the rise of punitive workfare, increased gentrification of urban areas, privatization of public functions, the shrinking of collective protections for the working class via economic deregulation, and the rise of underpaid, precarious wage labor is the criminalization of poverty and mass incarceration.[110]:534[113] By contrast, it is extremely lenient in dealing with those in the upper echelons of society, in particular when it comes to economic crimes of the privileged classes and corporations such as fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, credit and insurance fraud, money laundering, and violation of commerce and labor codes.[110][114] According to Wacquant, neoliberalism doesn't shrink government but instead sets up a centaur state, with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom.[110][115]

In expanding upon Wacquant's thesis, sociologist and political economist John L. Campbell of Dartmouth College suggests that through privatization, the prison system exemplifies the centaur state:

On the one hand, it punishes the lower class, which populates the prisons; on the other hand, it profits the upper class, which owns the prisons, and it employs the middle class, which runs them.

In addition, he says the prison system benefits corporations through outsourcing, as the inmates are "slowly becoming a source of low-wage labor for some US corporations." Both through privatization and outsourcing, Campbell argues, the US penal state reflects neoliberalism.[118]:61 Campbell also argues that while neoliberalism in the US established a penal state for the poor, it also put into place a debtor state for the middle class, and that "both have had perverse effects on their respective targets: increasing rates of incarceration among the lower class and increasing rates of indebtednessand recently home foreclosureamong the middle class."[118]:68

David McNally, Professor of Political Science at York University, argues that while expenditures on social welfare programs have been cut, expenditures on prison construction have increased significantly during the neoliberal era, with California having "the largest prison-building program in the history of the world."[119] The scholar Bernard Harcourt contends the neoliberal concept that the state is inept when it comes to economic regulation but efficient in policing and punishing "has facilitated the slide to mass incarceration."[120] Both Wacquant and Harcourt refer to this phenomenon as "Neoliberal Penality."[121][122]

The effect of neoliberalism on global health, particularly the aspect of international aid involves key players such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. According to James Pfeiffer,[123] neoliberal emphasis has been placed on free markets and privatization which has been tied to the "new policy agenda" in which NGOs seen as being able to provide better social welfare than governments. International NGOs have been promoted to fill holes in public services created by the World Bank and IMF through their promotion of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) which reduce government health spending, and which Pfeiffer criticized as unsustainable. The reduced health spending and the gain of the public health sector by NGOs causes the local health system to become fragmented, undermines local control of health programs and contributes to local social inequality between NGO workers and local individuals.[124]

In 2016, researchers for the IMF released a paper entitled "Neoliberalism: Oversold?," which stated:

There is much to cheer in the neoliberal agenda. The expansion of global trade has rescued millions from abject poverty. Foreign direct investment has often been a way to transfer technology and know-how to developing economies. Privatization of state-owned enterprises has in many instances led to more efficient provision of services and lowered the fiscal burden on governments.

However, it was also critical of some neoliberal policies, such as freedom of capital and fiscal consolidation for "increasing inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion."[125] The authors also note that some neoliberal policies are to blame for financial crises around the world growing bigger and more damaging.[126] The report contends the implementation of neoliberal policies by economic and political elites has led to "three disquieting conclusions":

The IMF has itself been criticized for its neoliberal policies.[128][129] Rajesh Makwana writes that "the World Bank and IMF, are major exponents of the neoliberal agenda."[130] Sheldon Richman, editor of the libertarian journal The Freeman, also sees the IMF imposing "corporatist-flavored 'neoliberalism' on the troubled countries of the world." The policies of spending cuts coupled with tax increases give "real market reform a bad name and set back the cause of genuine liberalism." Paternalistic supranational bureaucrats foster "long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard, and politicization, while discrediting market reform and forestalling revolutionary liberal change."[131]

Rowden wrote that the IMFs monetarist approach towards prioritising price stability (low inflation) and fiscal restraint (low budget deficits) was unnecessarily restrictive and has prevented developing countries from scaling up long-term investment in public health infrastructure, resulting in chronically underfunded public health systems, demoralising working conditions that have fueled a "brain drain" of medical personnel, and the undermining of public health and the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing countries.[132]

Nicolas Firzli has argued that the rise of neoliberalism eroded the post-war consensus and Eisenhower-era Republican centrism that had resulted in the massive allocation of public capital to large-scale infrastructure projects throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in both Western Europe and North America: In the pre-Reagan era, infrastructure was an apolitical, positively connoted, technocratic term shared by mainstream economists and policy makers [] including President Eisenhower, a praetorian Republican leader who had championed investment in the Interstate Highway System, Americas national road grid [] But Reagan, Thatcher, Delors and their many admirers amongst Clintonian, New Labour and EU Social-Democrat decision makers in Brussels sought to dismantle the generous state subsidies for social infrastructure and public transportation across the United States, Britain and the European Union.[133]

Following Brexit and the United States presidential election, 2016 and the progressive emergence of a new kind of self-seeking capitalism (Trumponomics) moving away to some extent from the neoliberal orthodoxies of the past, we may witness a massive increase in infrastructure investment in the United States, Britain and other advanced economies [134][135]

Mark Arthur has written that the influence of neoliberalism has given rise to an "anti-corporatist" movement in opposition to it. This "anti-corporatist" movement is articulated around the need to re-claim the power that corporations and global institutions have stripped governments of". He says that Adam Smith's "rules for mindful markets" served as a basis for the anti-corporate movement, "following government's failure to restrain corporations from hurting or disturbing the happiness of the neighbor [Smith]".[136]

Nicolas Firzli has argued that the neoliberal era was essentially defined by the economic ideas of Milton Friedman who wrote that if anything is certain to destroy our free society, to undermine its very foundation, it would be a widespread acceptance by management of social responsibilities in some sense other than to make as much money as possible. This is a fundamentally subversive doctrine [137] Firzli insists that prudent, fiduciary-driven long-term investors cannot ignore the environmental, social and corporate governance consequences of actions taken by the CEOs of the companies whose shares they hold: the long-dominant Friedman stance is becoming culturally unacceptable and nancially costly in the boardrooms of pension funds and industrial rms in Europe and North America.[137]

Counterpoints to neoliberalism:

Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

American scholar and cultural critic Henry Giroux alleges neoliberalism holds that market forces should organize every facet of society, including economic and social life, and promotes a social darwinist ethic which elevates self-interest over social needs.[148][149][150]

According to the economists Howell and Diallo, neoliberal policies have contributed to a U.S. economy in which 30% of workers earn low wages (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is underemployed; only 40% of the working-age population in the U.S. is adequately employed.[151]

The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) argued that the driving force behind rising inequality in the U.S. has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry.[152] However, countries have applied neoliberal policies at varying levels of intensity; for example, the OECD has calculated that only 6% of Swedish workers are beset with wages it considers low, and that Swedish wages are overall lower.[153] Others argue that Sweden's adoption of neoliberal reforms, in particular the privatization of public services and reduced state benefits, has resulted in income inequality growing faster in Sweden than any other OECD nation.[154][155] In the 2014 elections, Swedish voters rejected the neoliberal policies of the center-right government which had undermined the social safety net and put the left-leaning Social Democrats back in power.[156]

The rise of anti-austerity parties in Europe and SYRIZA's victory in the Greek legislative elections of January 2015 have some proclaiming the end of neoliberalism.[157]

In Latin America, the "pink tide" that swept leftist governments into power at the turn of the millennium can be seen as a reaction against neoliberal hegemony and the notion that "there is no alternative" (TINA) to the Washington Consensus.[158]

Notable critics of neoliberalism in theory or practice include economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Michael Hudson,[159]Robert Pollin,[160] Julie Matthaei,[161] and Richard D. Wolff;[143] linguist Noam Chomsky;[43] geographer and anthropologist David Harvey;[67] political activist and public intellectual Cornel West;[162] Marxist feminist Gail Dines;[163] author, activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein;[164] journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot;[165] Belgian psychologist Paul Verhaeghe;[166] journalist and activist Chris Hedges;[167] and the alter-globalization movement in general, including groups such as ATTAC. Critics of neoliberalism argue that not only is neoliberalism's critique of socialism (as unfreedom) wrong, but neoliberalism cannot deliver the liberty that is supposed to be one of its strong points.

In protest against neoliberal globalization, South Korean farmer and former president of the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation Lee Kyung-hae committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart during a meeting of the WTO in Cancun, Mexico in 2003. He was protesting against the decision of the South Korean government to reduce subsidies to farmers. Prior to his death he expressed his concerns in broken English:[5]:96

My warning goes out to the all citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation that uncontrolled multinational corporations and a small number of bit WTO members officials are leading an undesirable globalization of inhuman, environment-distorting, farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately otherwise the failed logic of the neo-liberalism will perish the diversities of agriculture and disastrously to all human being.[5]:96[168]

Originally posted here:

Neoliberalism - Wikipedia

These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesnt mean it shouldnt be punished. I havent faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. You couldnt beat the crap out of a dirty diaper! He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I havent felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they dont find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldnt justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- theyre just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasnt something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, its prayer; when God talks to Bush, its policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, Aint Got Dick. Bush fought a war on poverty and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasnt choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. Its hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes its not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bushs help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America theyre called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility unless youre Republican. Brent Reilly

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Quotes About Liberal (122 quotes)

For more information, call the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies: (678) 466-4883

The Liberal Studies program allows students to create an individualized curriculum composed of courses and experiences which meet their individual career needs. This approach is different from many traditional, discipline-based baccalaureate programs which are designed in part to prepare students for advanced work in a specific academic discipline -- a major in history or biology, for example. This flexibility enables students to develop academic plans that meet the ever-changing requirements of the world of work, but it also requires careful planning. Students should clarify their career or learning goals as they begin designing the components of their program. The bachelors degree in Liberal Studies can also be an appropriate preparation for students planning to attend graduate school in certain disciplines and professions. Students may earn either a baccalaureate degree by completing a planned program of 120 semester credit hours or an associate's degree with a major in Liberal Studies upon the completion of Areas A-F of the Core Curriculum.

While this degree program is open to all qualified students, it has been designed principally to meet the higher education needs of the following two specific groups of students:

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The program allows students the opportunity to bring together -- or integrate -- courses from a wide variety of academic areas or disciplines to support their individual career goals. In addition to the courses available at Clayton State, students may elect to take courses on the campuses of the Atlanta Regional Consortium like Emory, Georgia State, or Agnes Scott, or they can take advantage of distance learning courses offered by those institutions or others. The program also integrates on-campus with community-based, experiential methods of learning. Workforce skills today require new competencies such as effective collaboration and teamwork which may not be available through classroom instruction alone; these skills must be learned, developed, and advanced in real work environments. For these reasons, internship placements which support this component are arranged for all students in the program.

Since this program was developed to allow students to design individualized curriculum plans, the first step in the application process is the identification and clarification of career goals. These goals will shape the outcomes of individual programs -- what students need to know and be able to do in order to be successful in the occupational or professional area chosen. This step is primarily the responsibility of students seeking admission to the program and will require considerable investigation and reflection prior to completion of the application process. Only if students have clear goals statements can faculty advisors effectively assist them in designing programs which are appropriate and which maximize the resources available.

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Admission to the Program: Before enrolling in BALS 3901 (Liberal Studies Internship/Practicum), students must have:

Individualized Curriculum: Students work closely with an assigned Liberal Studies advisor to develop a curriculum plan which takes advantage of the wide range of learning resources available. Courses may be drawn from any discipline, but all courses must apply toward the baccalaureate degrees at Clayton State. Courses from a career associate degree program (AAS) generally do not count toward baccalaureate degrees. Completing a degree in Liberal Studies requires completion of 120 semester hours as follows:

Completing a degree in Integrative studies requires completion of 120 semester hours as follows:

Academic Standing: A grade of C or better is required in the BALS 3901 course. Students must maintain a 2.0 overall grade point average to remain in good standing as defined by University System policy. In addition, no more than 6 semester hours of D grades can be counted in the courses that are chosen to fulfill the upper division requirements of the program.

Residency Requirement: The normal University residency requirement of 30 hours applies, with the following exceptions: (1) all BALS 3901 courses must be taken in residence at Clayton State University; and (2) 9 hours of coursework taken from schools participating in the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE) may be counted as in residence, provided the courses are approved in advance as part of the students Liberal Studies program of study. Note: Of the 30 hours required for residency, 21 semester hours must be 3000-4000 level courses credited toward your degree.

Liberal Studies Internship: The Liberal Studies Practicum/Internship (BALS 3901) is the principal "experiential learning" component of the program, though students may also earn additional credit via other internships or cooperative education. This seminar will normally be taken during the first term of the senior year, and the placement site will be in a professional work environment related to the interests/career goals of the individual student. Placement may be with for-profit, not-for-profit, or governmental entities as appropriate. Collaborating businesses/agencies must agree to create and supervise meaningful experiences that will allow students to observe and participate in real world projects and activities that bear directly on the challenges of the contemporary workplace. Students are permitted to complete a practicum or internship in the company where they are already employed. Students are encouraged to seek experiential opportunities outside the USA.

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The Liberal Studies program provides the opportunity for a student to work with an advisor to design a curriculum that meets the students career and educational needs. This flexibility enables students to develop academic programs that meet the ever-changing requirements of the world of work. A bachelors degree in Liberal Studies can also be designed to prepare students for graduate school in certain disciplines and professions.

Before beginning upper-division study in Liberal Studies, applicants must have:

Core Curriculum (Areas A - E) 42 hours

All Liberal Studies Core Curriculum requirements are shown in the suggested degree program.

Lower Division Core Requirements (Core Curriculum Area F) 18 hours

Humanities 3-9 hours

Any of the following 1000- or 2000-level courses: AFAM, WST, ART, CMS, COMM, THEA, ENGL, FREN, MUSC, PHIL, and SPAN

Social Sciences 3-9 hours

Any of the following 1000- or 2000-level courses: AFAM, WST, ECON, EDUC, HIST, POLS, PSYC, SOCI

Natural Sciences and Mathematics 0-6 hours

Any 1000- or 2000-level MATH courses numbered 1113 or higher not already applied to Areas A or D and/or any 1000- or 2000-level ASTR, BIOL, CHEM, or PHYS, or other science courses not already applied to Area D.

Area Major Courses 0-12 hours

Courses from Area F of any major that have not been used to satisfy other Core Curriculum category requirements.

Upper Division Required Courses 3 hours

BALS 3901, Liberal Studies Practicum/Internship 3 hours

Students may take up to 9 hours of BALS 3901, but students may only register for 1 semester of BALS 3901 per semester. Additional terms of BALS 3901 will be applied in the upper division.

Upper Division Area Major Courses 57 hours

The Liberal Studies Major requires students to complete a CSU minor program in Arts & Sciences (African-American Studies, History, English (Literature), English (Writing), Womens Studies, Communication & Media Studies, Philosophy, Psychology, Political Science, Chemistry, etc.).

Fulfilling the requirements for a minor in an area of expertise enables students to move toward achieving career and academic goals. Additional courses may be drawn from any field, but must be in the students advised program of study. No more than 18 lower division hours may be applied to this category.

Total Degree Requirements 120 hours

In order to be admitted to the upper division level of the Integrative Studies program, students must have and institutional grade point average of at least 2.0 and must maintain a minimum 2.0 GPA to progress to graduation.

For general Clayton State University admission information

visit http://admissions.clayton.edu/

or email Clayton State University info

or call (678) 466-4115

BALS Curriculum Worksheet Fall 2015

BALS Graduation Application 2015

BALS Graduation Application 2011

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Liberal Studies - Interdisciplinary Studies - Clayton ...

Question: what do public education, public roads, and earned benefits have in common with each other?

Answer: They all are in danger in the upcoming presidency of the great populist and (white) working-class hero, Donald Trump.

Trump has announced that he is nominating Betsy DeVos, a member of the DeVos family of Michigan, which rivals the Koch family of Kansas in its wealth and dedication to right-wing, corporatist causes. Tierney Sneed of Talking Points Memo reports

Much of DeVos political activity has been focused on the expansion of charter schools and school vouchers, putting her selection in line with Trumps campaign proposal to shift $20 billion in federal education funding into state block grants to enroll children in charter and private schools. The DeVos family bankrolled a failed 2000 Michigan ballot initiative that would have required that students enrolled in failing public school districts be offered vouchers for private school tuition. Though the measure was rejected soundly by voters, the DeVoses doubled down on the issue and formed a political action committee to support pro-voucher candidates nationwide, according to ChalkBeat, a nonprofit news organization focused on education. They also operate philanthropic organizations known for giving to entities aligned with the charter school movement, including faith-based schools and conservative think tanks, Inside Philanthropy reported.

Charter schools usually are not good for students, but generally profitable for the private companies sponsoring them- with taxpayer money. That sounds like the motivation for Donald Trump's transportation plan, under which as currently written

the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.

At least Trump was less antagonistic during the primary campaign toward earned benefits than were most of his rivals. Now that he has been elected, however, that is beginning to change. Jonathan Chait observes that in a Fox News interview with Brett Baier

Your solution has always been to put things together, including entitlement reform, says Baier, using Republican code for privatizing Medicare. Ryan replies, If youre going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.

Chait notes, however, "The Medicare trust fund has been extended 11 years as a result of the passage of Obamacare, whose cost reforms have helped bring health care inflation to historic lows. It is also untrue that repealing Obamacare requires changing traditional Medicare."

Ironies abound. Trump has gotten cold feet about deporting illegal immigrants, now asserting instead that his Administration will get tough on those who have committed crimes, which bears a curious resemblance to President Obama's policy. He speaks now of his signature wall on the Mexican border as part wall, part fence, not unlike the current structure.

But Trump was portrayed as a different kind of Republican candidate, and expected to be a different kind of Republican President. Guess again. While focused on squeezing from the presidency as much income for his businesses as he can, Trump is embarking on a plan to intertwine the federal government with the market to enrich the private sector at the expense of the American public and make crony capitalism the hallmark of his Adminstration. (WARNING: Video below is from a conservative libertarian legal outfit.) The campaign cry of "Crooked Hillary" should now be seen as a case of a plutomaniac with a serious case of envy.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

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Main Street Liberal

Infrastructure Build or Privatization Scam?

Trumpists are touting the idea of a big infrastructure build, and some Democrats are making conciliatory noises about working with the new regime on that front. But remember who youre dealing with: if you invest anything with this guy, be it money or reputation, you are at great risk of being scammed. So, what do we know about the Trump infrastructure plan, such as it is?

Crucially, its not a plan to borrow $1 trillion and spend it on much-needed projects which would be the straightforward, obvious thing to do. It is, instead, supposed to involve having private investors do the work both of raising money and building the projects with the aid of a huge tax credit that gives them back 82 percent of the equity they put in. To compensate for the small sliver of additional equity and the interest on their borrowing, the private investors then have to somehow make profits on the assets they end up owning.

You should immediately ask three questions about all of this.

First, why involve private investors at all? Its not as if the federal government is having any trouble raising money in fact, a large part of the justification for infrastructure investment is precisely that the government can borrow so cheaply. Why do we need private equity at all?

One answer might be that this way you avoid incurring additional public debt. But thats just accounting confusion. Imagine that youre building a toll road. If the government builds it, it ends up paying interest but gets the future revenue from the tolls. If it turns the project over to private investors, it avoids the interest cost but also loses the future toll revenue. The governments future cash flow is no better than it would have been if it borrowed directly, and worse if it strikes a bad deal, say because the investors have political connections.

Second, how is this kind of scheme supposed to finance investment that doesnt produce a revenue stream? Toll roads are not the main thing we need right now; what about sewage systems, making up for deferred maintenance, and so on? You could bring in private investors by guaranteeing them future government money say, paying rent in perpetuity for the use of a water system built by a private consortium. But this, even more than having someone else collect tolls, would simply be government borrowing through the back door with much less transparency, and hence greater opportunities for giveaways to favored interests.

A lot of people in politics and the media are scrambling to normalize what just happened to us, saying that it will all be OK and we can work with Trump. No, it wont, and no, we cant. The next occupant of the White House will be a pathological liar with a loose grip on reality; he is already surrounding himself with racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists; his administration will be the most corrupt in America history.

How did this happen? There were multiple causes, but you just cant ignore the reality that key institutions and their leaders utterly failed. Every news organization that decided, for the sake of ratings, to ignore policy and barely cover Trump scandals while obsessing over Clinton emails, every reporter who, for whatever reason often sheer pettiness played up Wikileaks nonsense and talked about how various Clinton stuff raised questions and cast shadows is complicit in this disaster. And then theres the FBI: its quite reasonable to argue that James Comey, whether it was careerism, cowardice, or something worse, tipped the scales and may have doomed the world.

No, Im not giving up hope. Maybe, just maybe, the sheer awfulness of whats happening will sink in. Maybe the backlash will be big enough to constrain Trump from destroying democracy in the next few months, and/or sweep his gang from power in the next few years. But if thats going to happen, enough people will have to be true patriots, which means taking a stand.

And anyone who doesnt who plays along and plays it safe is betraying America, and mankind.

As I said in todays column, nobody who thought Trump would be a disaster should change his or her mind because he won the election. He will, in fact, be a disaster on every front. And I think he will eventually drag the Republican Party into the abyss along with his own reputation; the question is whether he drags the rest of the country, and the world, down with him.

But its important not to expect this to happen right away. Theres a temptation to predict immediate economic or foreign-policy collapse; I gave in to that temptation Tuesday night, but quickly realized that I was making the same mistake as the opponents of Brexit (which I got right). So I am retracting that call, right now. Its at least possible that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly. More detail in Mondays column, I suspect.

On other fronts, too, dont expect immediate vindication. America has a vast stock of reputational capital, built up over generations; even Trump will take some time to squander it.

The true awfulness of Trump will become apparent over time. Bad things will happen, and he will be clueless about how to respond; if you want a parallel, think about how Katrina revealed the hollowness of the Bush administration, and multiply by a hundred. And his promises to bring back the good old days will eventually be revealed as the lies they are.

But it probably wont happen in a year. So the effort to reclaim American decency is going to have to have staying power; we need to build the case, organize, create the framework. And, of course, never forget who is right.

Its going to be a long time in the wilderness, and its going to be awful. If I sound calm and philosophical, Im not like everyone who cares, Im frazzled, sleepless, depressed. But we need to be stalwart.

Anyone who claims to be philosophical and detached after yesterday is either lying or has something very wrong with him (or her, but I doubt many women are in that camp.) Its a disaster on multiple levels, and the damage will echo down the decades if not the generations. And like anyone on my side of this debate, I keep feeling waves of grief.

Its natural, only human, to engage in recriminations, some of which are surely deserved. But while a post-mortem is going to be necessary, lashing out doesnt seem helpful or good for the lashers-out themselves.

Eventually those of us on the center-left will have to talk about political strategy. For now, however, I want to share some thoughts on how we should deal with this personally.

First of all, its always important to remember that elections determine who has the power, not who has the truth. The stunning upset doesnt mean that the alt-right is correct to view nonwhites as inferior, that voodoo economics works, whatever. And you have to hold to the truth as best you see it, even if it suffers political defeat.

That said, does it make sense on a personal level to keep struggling after this kind of blow? Why not give up on trying to save the world, and just look out for yourself and those close to you? Quietism does have its appeal. Admission: I spent a lot of today listening to music, working out, reading a novel, basically taking a vacation in my head. You cant help feeling tired and frustrated after this kind of setback.

But eventually one has to go back to standing for what you believe in. Its going to be a much harder, longer road than I imagined, and maybe it ends in irreversible defeat, if nothing else from runaway climate change. But I couldnt live with myself if I just gave up. And I hope others will feel the same.

I tweeted this out earlier, but for blog readers here it is in this form.

Some morning-after thoughts: what hits me and other so hard isnt just the immense damage Trump will surely do, to climate above all. Theres also a vast disillusionment that as of now I think of as the end of the romantic vision of America (which I still love).

What I mean is the notion of US history as a sort of novel in which there may be great tragedy, but theres always a happy ending. That is, we tell a story in which at times of crisis we always find the leader Lincoln, FDR and the moral courage we need.

Its a particular kind of American exceptionalism; other countries dont tell that kind of story about themselves. But I, like others, believed it.

Now it doesnt look very good, does it? But giving up is not an option. The world needs a decent, democratic America, or were all lost. And theres still a lot of decency in the nation its just not as dominant as I imagined. Time to rethink, for sure. But not to surrender.

Binyamin Appelbaum has a nice piece about the stall in world trade growth, which I (and many others) have been tracking for a while. And I thought Id write a bit more about this, if only to serve as a much-needed distraction from the election.

If theres a problem with the Appelbaum piece, it is that on casual reading it might seem to suggest that slowing trade growth is (a) necessarily the result of protectionism and (b) necessarily a bad thing. Neither of these is right.

I found myself thinking about this some years ago, when teaching trade policy at the Woodrow Wilson School. I was very struck by a paper by Taylor et al on the interwar decline in trade, which argued that much of this decline reflected rising transport costs, not protectionism. But how could transport costs have gone up? Was there technological regress?

The answer, as the paper correctly pointed out, is that real transport costs will rise even if there is continuing technological progress, as long as that progress is slower than in the rest of the economy.

To clear that story up in my own mind, I wrote up a little toy model, contained in these class notes from sometime last decade (?). Pretty sure I wrote them before the global trade stagnation happened, but theyre a useful guide all the same.

As I see it, we had some big technological advances in transportation containerization, probably better communication making it easier to break up the value chain; plus the great move of developing countries away from import substitution toward export orientation. (Thats a decline in tau and t in my toy model.) But this was a one-time event. Now that its behind us, no presumption that trade will grow faster than GDP. This need not represent a problem; its just the end of one technological era.

It is kind of ironic that globalization seems to be plateauing just as the political backlash mounts. But were not going to talk about the election.

Both Ross Douthat and David Brooks have now weighed in on the state of conservative intellectuals; both deserve credit for taking a critical look at their team.

But of course theres a but Id argue that they and others on the right still have huge blind spots. In fact, these blind spots are so huge as to make the critiques all but useless as a basis for reform. For if you ignore the true, deep roots of the conservative intellectual implosion, youre never going to make a real start on reconstruction.

What are these blind spots? First, belief in a golden age that never existed. Second, a simply weird refusal to acknowledge the huge role played by money and monetary incentives promoting bad ideas.

On the first point: Were supposed to think back nostalgically to the era when serious conservative intellectuals like Irving Kristol tried to understand the world, rather than treating everything as a political exercise in which ideas were just there to help their team win.

But it was never like that. Dont take my word for it; take the word of Irving Kristol himself, in his book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. Kristol explained his embrace of supply-side economics in the 1970s: I was not certain of its economic merits but quickly saw its political possibilities. This justified a cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or financial problems, because political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.

In short, never mind whether its right, as long as its politically useful. When David complains that conservative opinion-meisters began to value politics over everything else, hes describing something that happened well before Reagan.

But shouldnt there have been some reality checks along the way, with politically convenient ideas falling out of favor because they didnt work in practice? No because being wrong in the right way has always been a financially secure activity. I see this very clearly in economics, where there are three kinds of economists: liberal professional economists, conservative professional economists, and professional conservative economist the fourth box is more or less empty, because billionaires dont lavishly support hacks on the left.

There was a time, not long ago, when deficit scolds were actively dangerous when their huffing and puffing came quite close to stampeding Washington into really bad policies like raising the Medicare age (which wouldnt even have saved money) and short-term fiscal austerity. At this point their influence doesnt reach nearly that far. But they continue to play a malign role in our national discourse because they divert and distract attention from much more deserving problems, depriving crucial issues of political oxygen.

You saw that in the debates: four, count them, four questions about debt from the CRFB, not one about climate change. And you see it again in todays Times, with Pete Peterson (of course) and Paul Volcker (sigh) lecturing us about the usual stuff.

Whats so bad about this kind of deficit scolding? Its deeply misleading on two levels: the problem it purports to lay out is far less clearly a major issue than the scolds claim, and the insistence that we need immediate action is just incoherent.

So, about that supposed debt crisis: right now we have a more or less stable ratio of debt to GDP, and no hint of a financing problem. So claims that we are facing something terrible rest on the presumption that the budget situation will worsen dramatically over time. How sure are we about that? Less than you may imagine.

Yes, the population is getting older, which means more spending on Medicare and Social Security. But its already 2016, which means that quite a few baby boomers are already drawing on those programs; by 2020 well be about halfway through the demographic transition, and current estimates dont suggest a big budget problem.

Why, then, do you see projections of a large debt increase? The answer lies not in a known factor an aging population but in assumed growth in health care costs and rising interest rates. And the truth is that we dont know that these are going to happen. In fact, health costs have grown much more slowly since 2010 than previously projected, and interest rates have been much lower. As the chart above shows, taking these favorable surprises into account has already drastically reduced long-run debt projections. These days the long-run outlook looks vastly less scary than people used to imagine.

Like Claudia Sahm, I was struck by polling results indicating that around half of Trump supporters completely distrust official data although maybe a bit less surprised, since Ive been living in that world for years. In particular, the failure of high inflation to materialize led quite a few people on the right side of the political spectrum including the likes of Niall Ferguson to insist that the numbers were being cooked, so this is neither a new phenomenon nor one restricted to Trump types.

As it happened, there was a very easy answer to the inflation truthers: quite aside from the absurdity of claiming a conspiracy at the BLS, we had independent estimates such as the Billion Prices Index that closely matched official data. And theres similar independent evidence for a lot of the things where people now claim that official numbers are skewed. For example, the Gallup Healthways index provides independent confirmation of the huge gains in insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

But aside from validity, what explains this distrust of statistics? Is it because peoples own experience clashes with what theyre being told? I dont think so. In fact, when people are asked about personal outcomes, not about the economy, the story they tell is a lot like the official numbers. From that poll about Trumpian distrust of the data:

So people are feeling better, in line with what the data say, but claim that the economy is getting worse. Hard to believe that this isnt political, a case of going with the party line in the teeth of personal experience.

Ive posted other performances of this song by this band, but this is a good one and topical this week!

The much-hyped severe Brexit recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing which really shouldnt be that much of a surprise, because as I warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think about this?

Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that recession prediction: domestic investment demand would collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence capital flight. But the demand collapse doesnt seem to be happening. So what is the story?

For now, at least, Im coming at it from the trade side especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that one way to think about this is in terms of the home market effect, an old story in trade but one that only got formalized in 1980.

Heres an informal version: imagine a good or service subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient that if its consumed in two countries, you want to produce it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located? Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.

In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way this worked out was not that all production left the smaller economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make up for its smaller market.

In Britains case, Id suggest that we think of financial services as the industry in question. Such services are subject to both internal and external economies of scale, which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge financial centers around the world, one of which is, of course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to offset this adverse impact.

So, now were supposed to feel sorry for Paul Ryan?

For years, Ryan has cultivated a reputation on both sides of the aisle as a paragon of decency, earnestness, and principle; that rare creature of D.C. who seems genuinely guided by good faith. To many in Washington including no small number of reporters Ryans support for Trump is not merely a political miscalculation, but a craven betrayal.

Ugh. Ryan is not, repeat not, a serious, honest man of principle who has tainted his brand by supporting Donald Trump. He has been an obvious fraud all along, at least to anyone who can do budget arithmetic. His budget proposals invariably contain three elements:

1. Huge tax cuts for the wealthy. 2. Savage cuts in aid to the poor. 3. Mystery meat claims that he will raise trillions by closing unspecified tax loopholes and save trillions cutting unspecified discretionary spending.

Taking (1) and (2) together that is, looking at the policies he actually specifies his proposals have always increased the deficit, while transferring income from the have-nots to the haves. Only by invoking (3), which involves nothing but unsupported and implausible assertion, does he get to claim to reduce the deficit.

Yet he poses as an icon of fiscal probity. That is, he is, in his own way, every bit as much a fraud as The Donald.

So how has he been able to get away with this? The main answer is that he has been a huge beneficiary of false balance. The media narrative requires that there be serious, principled policy wonks on both sides of the aisle; Ryan has become the designated symbol of that supposed equivalence, even though actual budget experts have torn his proposals to shreds on repeated occasions.

And my guess is that the media will quickly forgive him for the Trump episode too. They need him for their bothsidesism. After all, its not as if there are any genuine honest policy wonks left in the party that nominated Donald Trump.

Simon Wren-Lewis has an excellent new paper trying to explain the widespread resort to austerity in the face of a liquidity trap, which is exactly the moment when such policies do the most harm. His bottom line is that

austerity was the result of right-wing opportunism, exploiting instinctive popular concern about rising government debt in order to reduce the size of the state.

I think this is right; but I would emphasize more than he does the extent to which both the general public and Very Serious People always assume that reducing deficits is the responsible thing to do. We have some polling from the 1930s, showing a strong balanced-budget bias even then:

I think Simon would say that this is consistent with his view that large deficits grease the rails for deficit phobia, since FDRs administration did run up deficits and debt that were unprecedented for peacetime. But has there ever been a time when the public favored bigger deficits?

Meanwhile, as someone who was in the trenches during the US austerity fights, I was struck by how readily mainstream figures who werent especially right-wing in general got sucked into the notion that debt reduction was THE central issue. Ezra Klein documented this phenomenon with respect to Bowles-Simpson:

For reasons Ive never quite understood, the rules of reportorial neutrality dont apply when it comes to the deficit. On this one issue, reporters are permitted to openly cheer a particular set of highly controversial policy solutions. At Tuesdays Playbook breakfast, for instance, Mike Allen, as a straightforward and fair a reporter as youll find, asked Simpson and Bowles whether they believed Obama would do the right thing on entitlements with the right thing clearly meaning cut entitlements.

Meanwhile, as Brad Setser points out, the IMF whose research department has done heroic work puncturing austerity theories and supporting a broadly Keynesian view of macroeconomics is, in practice, pushing for fiscal contraction almost everywhere.

Again, this doesnt exactly contradict Simons argument, but maybe suggests that there is a bit more to it.

Ive been writing about Donald Trumps claim that Mexicos value-added tax is an unfair trade policy, which is just really bad economics. Heres Joel Slemrod explaining that a VAT has the same effects as a sales tax. Now, nobody thinks that sales taxes are an unfair trade practice. New York has fairly high sales taxes; Delaware has no such tax. Does anyone think that this gives New York an unfair advantage in interstate competition?

But it turns out that Trump wasnt saying ignorant things off the top of his head: he was saying ignorant things fed to him by his incompetent economic advisers. Heres the campaign white paper on economics. The VAT discussion is on pages 12-13 and its utterly uninformed.

And its not the worst thing: theres lots of terrible stuff in the white paper, at every level.

Should we be reassured that Trump wasnt actually winging it here, just taking really bad advice? Not at all. This says that if he somehow becomes president, and decides to take the job seriously, it wont help because his judgment in advisers, his notion of who constitutes an expert, is as bad as his judgment on the fly.

Last nights debate was an incredible blowout yet both candidates were pretty much who we already knew they were. This was the Hillary Clinton of the Benghazi hearing confronting the Donald Trump weve seen at every stage of the campaign.

But this then raises a question: how did the race get so close? Why, on the eve of the debate, did polls show at best a narrow Clinton lead? What happened to the commanding lead Clinton held after the conventions?

You might say that Clinton ran a terrible campaign but what, exactly, did she do? Trump may have learned to read from a TelePrompter, but was that such a big deal?

Well, my guess is that it was the Goring of Hillary: beginning in late August, with the AP report on the Clinton Foundation, the mainstream media went all in on abnormalizing Mrs. Clinton, a process that culminated with Matt Lauer, who fixated on emails while letting grotesque, known, Trump lies slide. Heres a graphic, using the Upshots estimate of election probabilities (which is a useful summary of what the polls say):

The thing is, it was all scurrilous. The AP, if it had been honest, had found no evidence of wrongdoing or undue influence; if meeting a Nobel Peace Prize winner who happened to be a personal friend was their prime example But dinging the Clintons was what the cool kids were supposed to do, with normal rules not applying.

And this media onslaught pushed the race quite close on the eve of the first debate. It was feeling like 2000 all over again; and I think Jamelle Bouie got this exactly right:

But it all went off script last night, partly because HRC did so well and DJT so badly but also, I think, because pressure from progressives ensured that there was a lot of real-time fact-checking.

Whether it turns out to have been enough to turn the tide remains to be seen. But anyone in the media who participated in the razzing of Hillary Clinton should think about what we saw on that stage, and ask himself what the hell he thought he was doing.

Read this article:

Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal

By Lisa Lambert | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON U.S. Democrats' liberal firebrand, Senator Elizabeth Warren, threw down the gauntlet to President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday, telling labor union members there are financial and social issues where her party will fight him and continuing to blast the Republican.

Battling bigotry is the first job for Democrats after the election, said Warren, of Massachusetts, giving a sense of how her party will operate now that it no longer controls the White House and remains the minority in both chambers of Congress.

"We will fight back against attacks on Latinos, African Americans, women, Muslims, immigrants, disabled Americans - on anyone," said Warren, who sparred frequently over Twitter with Trump and criticized him on the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election. "Whether Donald Trump sits in a glass tower or sits in the White House, we will not give an inch on this, not now, not ever."

She said Trump had "encouraged a toxic stew of hatred and fear" and during the campaign "regularly made statements that undermined core values of our democracy."

In the speech to the AFL-CIO labor federation, Warren also said Democrats will resist attempts to loosen financial regulation, "gut" the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

"If Trump and the Republican Party try to turn loose the big banks and financial institutions so they can once again gamble with our economy and bring it all crashing down, then we will fight them every step of the way," she said.

Warren did highlight areas of agreement. She said "count me in" on Trump's support of a new Glass-Steagall law to separate investment and retail banking, reforming trade deals, maintaining Social Security benefits, helping on childcare and college costs and rebuilding infrastructure.

Warren rose to lead the liberal wing of the party during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. After Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's attempt to appoint her as the first director of the CFPB, she won a seat in Congress.

In 2015, progressive groups and a political action committee pressed her to run for president. Since Trump's victory on Tuesday, many have already renewed their calls, for the 2020 presidential election.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

WASHINGTON/MARRAKESH, Morocco Donald Trump is seeking quick ways of withdrawing from a global agreement to limit climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying widening international backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans are looking for the quickest ways to tear down Obamacare following Donald Trump's election as U.S. president, including rapidly confirming a new health secretary who could recast regulations while waiting for lawmakers to pass sweeping repeal legislation.

ANKARA Turkey warned its citizens about travel to the United States on Saturday in response to what the foreign ministry called increasingly violent protests against President-elect Donald Trump.

Link:

Liberal Warren throws down gauntlet to President-elect ...