Neoliberalism

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{{cquote|Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology permeating the public policies of many governments in developed and developing countries|||Vicente Navarro, International Journal of Health Services, vol. 37<ref>Navarro, Vicente. “NEOLIBERALISM AS A CLASS IDEOLOGY; OR, THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF THE GROWTH OF INEQUALITIES.” International Journal of Health Services, vol. 37, no. 1, 2007, pp. 47–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45138405. Accessed 20 Jun. 2022.
</ref>}}

'''Neoliberalism''' advocates a [[Globalism|globalist]] market economy, claims to promote market competition, and has an explicit distaste for wage and price controls.<ref>https://oliverhartwich.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/neoliberalism.pdf</ref>  The coiner of the term was Alexander Rüstow, who argued against policies like the minimum wage, but wanted to save liberalism from the presence of rampant cartel and monopoly behavior through limiting the ability of big businesses to advertise and prioritizing small business interests.  Rüstow, along with other liberal thinkers were invited to discuss the ideas of ''Good Society'' author Walter Lippmann at the Lippmann Colloquium of 1938, an event considered the "big bang" of the neoliberal project.<ref>https://www.academia.edu/82642613/The_Walter_Lippmann_Colloquium_The_Birth_of_Neoliberalism</ref>  Lippmann had proposed a "third way" between old style liberalism and the alleged "overly-centrally-planned collectivism" of [[New Deal|New Dealer]]s who he characterized as enabling lazy, work avoiding special interests to prevent a satisfactory distribution of wealth.<ref>https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-origins-of-neoliberalism/</ref><ref>https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/history-of-neoliberal-meaning/528276/</ref><ref>The Good Society, Walter Lipmann, page 127</ref>  While Rüstow's ideas of a 'free economy' guided by a state  hostile to monopolies were ultimately championed at the conference, including by Lippmann, the attendee [[Friedrich Hayek]] was not entirely convinced but was still united in a call for a new liberalism and continued to work with Rüstow.<ref>https://oliverhartwich.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/neoliberalism.pdf</ref>

Today, neoliberalism is more associated with [[Friedrich Hayek|Hayek]] than Rüstow.  According to Hayek, the market behaves like a mind which converts our opinions and values into prices that supercede full understanding by individuals.  Like Rüstow he was also averse to direct price controls or state-led production.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world</ref>   Hayek continued to work with Rüstow at his Mont Perelin Society, which included a new thinker typically considered a figurehead of neoliberalism: [[Milton Friedman]].  Because of the Mont Perelin Society and the "[[Chicago School]]" of economics, neoliberalism is now associated more with market deregulation than market regulation, with some academics arguing this is an affront to Rüstow's original conception of the term.<ref>https://oliverhartwich.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/neoliberalism.pdf</ref>  Regardless, neoliberalism as used today became increasingly associated with Hayek and now Friedman.  With the definition centered around Hayek and Friedman, economic neoliberalism-in-action (on a mass scale) partially started with neoliberals selling [[monetarism]] to left-leaning governments in the 1970s.<ref>https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-was-neoliberalism/</ref> This, along with a neoliberal advocation of union busting,<ref>https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/spontaneous-order-looking-back-at-neoliberalism</ref> was a response among "free market thinkers" to economic woes in the 1970s, including inflation in the USA.<ref>https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-was-neoliberalism/</ref> Self-described neoliberals and [[fellow traveler]]s think rather highly of the current social and political order, particularly the global order exemplified by the IMF and the World Bank.<ref>https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/coming-out-as-neoliberals</ref><ref>https://neoliberalproject.org/neoliberal-podcast</ref>  Recently, the logic of Hayek's neoliberalism has been weaponized across the political spectrum to frame government interventions, such as attempts to regulate 'price gouging' as dangerous distortions of the market due to the market's alleged intersubjective reality that mere mortals cannot safely manipulate.

==Economic neoliberalism==

Economic neoliberalism typically refers to a "free market" economics, under the maintenance of a state, and with a distaste for price controls, wage controls, extensive federal planning, and, among the most extreme neoliberals, the elimination of nearly every federally run program outside pandemic control, international relations, tax collection, law enforcement, military, and commerce promotion. 

Economist [[Milton Friedman]] is seen as a neoliberal, but he is also sometimes coupled with brutal [[authoritarianism]]. Former [[Chile]]an dictator [[Augusto Pinochet]] is an example of the kind of monster who would literally kill for the [[free market]]. Other proponents include (or have included) [[Tony Blair]], [[Bill Clinton]], [[Margaret Thatcher]], [[Ronald Reagan]], and [[Colombia]]n President [[Álvaro Uribe]].

[[George Monbiot]] writes that "So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognize it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this [[utopian]], [[millenarian]] [[faith]] describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like [[Darwinism|Darwin’s theory of evolution]]. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power."<ref name="Monbiot">[[George Monbiot]], [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems], ''[[The Guardian]]'', Apr. 15, 2016.</ref>  

====Monetarism====
{{main|Monetarism}}
Monetarism is the belief that the money supply itself regulates inflation and economic growth, and that developed countries who tighten their budgets benefit during times of economic distress. Believers in monetarism are known for scaremongering about "money printing".

While neoliberalism arguably became popular partially due to charismatic monetarists in the 1970s, monetarism and neoliberalism are theoretically separate and overlapping. One can be a neoliberal and not a monetarist, but popular neoliberal thinkers tend to be monetarists. Additionally, "neoliberal" political programs also tend to involve "money tightening" using monetarism as a justification.<ref>https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/spontaneous-order-looking-back-at-neoliberalism</ref>

===Historical development in the United States===
The Lippmann Colloquium of 1938 was essentially a meeting of liberal thinkers to rehabilitate liberalism after mass distaste for the monopolistic practices of prior liberal capitalism.  Rüstow, the coiner of the term, also sometimes called an 'ordoliberalist', explicitly rejected most -isms including capitalism, socialism, and fascism.  He conceived of a highly regulated, almost social democratic state which saw progressive taxation, free education, but also an aversion to direct price intervention.  While [[Ludwig Von Mises]] attended the conference, he later called the neoliberal project totalitarian for its intrusion into the market system.<ref>Mises, L. (1949). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press</ref>  Hayek, while pejoratively described as a 'slave of Mises' by a friend of  Rüstow, was sympathetic to the anti-monopoly sentiment of Rüstow.  Unlike Rüstow, who promoted agressive government intervention to split and prevent monopolies, Hayek wanted to use the law to empower small businesses to sue monopolistic or cartel practices.  While its arguable there is no single neoliberal conception of anti-monopoly practices due to differences of opinion, neoliberals have all been vocally opposed to collectivism, price controls, and wage controls.

Self-identification with neoliberalism fell out of favor in the 1970s and 1980s, just as the now popular conception of neoliberalism was taking place.  This was the era of Milton Friedman Friedman being a Hayek collaborator.  This 'free market' rhetoric shared anti-collectivist attitudes more similar to Lippmann than Rüstow, with a heavy focus on dismantling not only all [[New Deal]] projects, but even adjacent ones considered too collectivist.  Like Rüstow, Friedman believed in subsidized education, but fell short of Rüstow's belief in free education, preferring a system of partial vouchers for private schooling.

The most important value in neoliberal planning was alleged [[empiricism]]. Outcomes needed to be presented as measurable, and measured, to provide a scientific veneer to watered down Austrian economics. This emphasis on presenting measurable results while politicking created a symbiosis between neoliberals and some [[technocrat]]s.

Under the [[Jimmy Carter]] administration, many neoliberals were given a chance to put their ideas into practice. While neoliberalism was conceived to save liberalism through anti-monopoly practices, they all disagreed on what that actually meant, and the New Deal and Great Society economy was already too regulated for neoliberals. What this ultimately meant was [[deregulation]] of the economy and budgetary austerity in the 1970s. Many economists were brought in for their purported technical expertise, such as {{wpl|Paul Volcker||,}} who was appointed as the chairmand of the [[Fed]] and {{wpl|Alfred E. Kahn||,}} who claimed that "the superiority of open markets… lies in the fact that the optimum outcome cannot be predicted",<ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-06-25 |title=Chapter 1: Overview/Background |url=https://www.justice.gov/atr/chapter-1-overviewbackground |access-date=2023-02-24 |website=www.justice.gov |language=en}}</ref> an argument that is similar to Friedrich Hayek's famous paper ''The Use of Knowledge in Society.'' Under Carter's government, many pieces of deregulation passed, such as the {{wpl|National Gas Policy Act||,}} the {{wpl|Regulatory Flexibility Act||,}} and the {{wpl|Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act||,}} There were many nominal and real successes of globalist free-market capitalism, with overall economic growth in US and many other countries as well.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Barro |first=Robert J. |date=August 1996 |title=Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study |journal=National Bureau of Economic Research|url=https://www.nber.org/papers/w5698}}</ref>

Under Carter, a proposed health care program was rejected as inflationary and anti-poverty programs were abandoned.  Carter also made cuts to New Deal policy.  Since the New Deal, the pricing of various forms of travel along with the wages of its employees had been heavily regulated by the federal government.  Carter's Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 abolished federal regulations as well as the entire Civil Aeronautics Board.  New Deal public housing was also on the chopping block both by Carter's 1970s HUD secretary appointee and Carter's proposed plan for the 1980s.  Carter also proceeded to remove federal regulations from the pharmaceutical industry, trucking, and railway industries in an effort to improve prices.<ref>Gibbs, David N. (2025) "America’s First Neoliberal President," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 5.</ref>
 
Prominent neoliberals like Robert Rubin acknowledge neoliberalism's issue with creating [[income inequality]] within developed countries. Many traditional liberals worry that the increasing gap between the lower class and the mega-rich is undermining [[democracy]] as we know it. This reflects the prediction of [[James Madison]], the 'Father of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]]', that "We are free today substantially but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few." He then went on to say that we must then rely on the "best elements in society" to readjust the laws of the country to the changed conditions.

The other major criticism of domestic neoliberals is their support for free trade. Many people on all sides of the political spectrum (in every country) worry about the effects of free trade on everything from wages to sovereignty, even though almost every economist on the left and on the right agree that protectionism has a negative effect on welfare and on the economy as a whole.<ref>{{Cite web|  url=https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/fast-track-authority/ |title=Fast-Track Authority |access-date=2022-05-20 |website=www.igmchicago.org}}</ref><ref name="nytimes.com">Mankiw, N. Gregory (24 April 2015). [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actually-agree-on-this-point-the-wisdom-of-free-trade.html?mcubz=0 "Economists Actually Agree on This: The Wisdom of Free Trade"]. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved 19 May 2022. "Economists are famous for disagreeing with one another.... But economists reach near unanimity on some topics, including international trade."</ref>

===Modern politicians===
Many, if not most, modern American politicians have been criticized as neoliberal by anti-neoliberals, including both prominent [[Republicans]] and Democrats.

Despite neoliberalism being a common ideology in Republican Party circles, prominent elected Republicans such as [[Dick Cheney]] and Donald Trump have vocally eschewed large portions of neoliberalism, although both somewhat opportunistically.  Dick Cheney explicitly and publicly rejected monetarism and federal balanced budgets to explain the 2004 federal fiscal stimulus, but then mostly let the economy fall apart without much intervention at the end of his second term.  Additionally, during [[Donald Trump]]'s first term, Trump publicly advocated against monetarism, rejected the idea that America can default on its debt, and spoke of little concern for "balanced budgets". Most [[journalist]]s during Trump's first term characterized him as an anti-neoliberal. Another reason for this characterization was Trump's repeated attacks on international free trade.  The beginning of Trump's second term however took a turbocharged [[Milton Friedman|Friedmanite]] neoliberal turn with Trump's promotion of [[Elon Musk]] to head the 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE).  "DOGE" brought private sector 'titans' to 'fix' the government by treating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a rogue agency, gutting the [[EPA]], and claiming they were applying market principles to the federal budget.  DOGE was short-lived in its activity however. Trump's ''An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14.'' was passed in July 2025, and while it included neoliberal policy based on fake concern for the budget, the bill itself raised the debt and deficit by an enormous amount.  Shortly after the passage of the bill, Elon Musk, who was prior tweeting out literal [[Milton Friedman]] videos on his social media website, began to rage about the size of the bill, and started severing ties with Trump.  While Trump's legacy has been mixed on the topic of neoliberalism, Trump was initially seen by many Republican neoliberals as an inspirational example of Hayek's "independent", ie a beneficiary of inherited wealth whose lack of concern for conventional morality could steer America into new paths.

Modern Democratic figures such as [[Bill Clinton]], [[Barack Obama]], [[Joe Biden]], and [[Hillary Clinton]] have all been criticized as neoliberal due to their support for free trade agreements, their promotion of a selfish technocracy, and their interest in preserving private enterprise in essential needs like health insurance and housing.

Other modern, domestic neoliberals in the United States include Michael Kinsley and [[Michael Bloomberg]].

==Self-described neoliberal organizations==
The right-wing-libertarian ''Adam Smith Institute'' has branded itself as neoliberal, previously describing themselves as "Libertarian". It defines neoliberalism partly as people who believe that mainstream politics/society/academia etc is actually the best it has ever been.<ref>https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/coming-out-as-neoliberals</ref>

The ''Neoliberal Podcast'' is a podcast run by self-described "moderate democrats" who oppose what they call the [[Bernie Sanders|Bernie]]/[[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez|AOC]] wing of the Democratic Party, who they fear have an increasingly outsized influence in Democratic Party politics. Guests of their podcast include ''Vox'' writers, members of Clinton's political entourage, Washington DC policy wonks (for example, members of the "Progressive" Policy Institute), and Democratic Congressmen.<ref>https://neoliberalproject.org/neoliberal-podcast</ref>

The ''Neoliberal Project'' is a neoliberal political advocacy group which holds local chapter meetings.<ref>https://neoliberalproject.org/about-us</ref>

==International relations neoliberalism==
In the academic field of [[international relations]], neoliberalism refers to a school most closely associated with Harvard and Princeton universities. The neoliberal school of International relations (IR) arose in the 1970s as a response to the hegemony of the "realism" school. Both neorealists and neoliberalists in IR believe that individual states are egoists which seek to advance self-interests primarily.<ref>Keohane & Martin: 1995: 39</ref>

In IR, "liberalism" refers to the orientation of [[Woodrow Wilson]] and other people who hoped to reshape the world through the use of [[war]] and international organizations. The goal of the early liberals was [[Democracy|democratization]] and an end to war. Neoliberals took these same goals but rejected the unscientific applications that had come before. Instead, neoliberals decided to apply rigorous [[mathematical]] and [[scientific]] techniques.
 
Most neoliberal analyses relied heavily on [[rational]] choice and [[game theory|game theoretic models]] borrowed extensively from neoclassical supply-side [[economics]]. (The main thing tying both domestic neoliberalism and international neoliberalism is the heavy reliance on axiomatic economics.) Neoliberals today believe that by tying [[state]]s together in institutions, it can decrease the signal noise that prevents communication between them and can increase the costs associated with provocation and aggression.

The best formulation of neoliberal hopes can be found in the "democratic peace" theory. According to this, no two mature democracies have ever fought a war against each other. Therefore, promoting liberal democracy around the world will have the side-effect of decreasing war. Since a vibrant middle class has long been recognized as a necessary condition for liberal democracy, neoliberals have focused on helping nations choose policies that would promote the creation of middle classes and democracy.  

==Criticism==
Criticism of neoliberalism often comes from history, politics, economics, and political economy. Realists often claim that because neoliberals ignore power, they are fooling themselves as to what usually causes war and struggle. They do, however, acknowledge that neoliberal claims and predictions can be seen to have come true in some cases. [[Social constructionism|Constructivists]] claim that neoliberals are ignoring the structure behind the norms they espouse, pointing to [[China]] as an example of a country that can follow the trade advice of the neoliberals without following their economic or political advice by privatizing its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or democratizing.

===Social inequality and decreased community cohesion===
Critics of neoliberalism typically claim that inequality increased around the globe since Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan ushered an era of global privatization and deregulation. They argue that capitalism does not in fact increase the economic prospects of the (very) poorest in the world, that hyper-individualism is destroying our social fabric, and that business deregulation creates economic inequality. Critics of economic inequality argue it causes social atomization through a wide living disparity between individual people, families, neighbors, and neighborhoods within a locality. However, the period between 1988 and 2008 might have witnessed the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the [[Industrial Revolution]], with mean incomes between countries converging.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Branko |first=Milanovic|date=November 2012 |title=Global Income Inequality by the Numbers : In History and Now |url=https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/12117 |language=en-US|journal=Policy Research Working Paper}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=People in Economics: Branko Milanovic – IMF Finance & Development Magazine {{!}} March 2019 |url=https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/03/profile-of-branko-milanovic-on-inequality-wellisz |access-date=2022-06-20|website=IMF |language=en}}</ref> However, inequality ''within'' countries has also been rising.<ref name="uninequality">[https://www.un.org/en/un75/inequality-bridging-divide Inequality: bridging the divide] - UN</ref>

Neoliberalism has been found to reduce well being through increased competition, social disconnection, and loneliness (aka "decreased community cohesion"). While it has been argued that neoliberalism promoted well being because of its perceived emphasis on growth and personal responsibility, it can be equally argued that neoliberalism decreased well being through its "ideological promotion of competition" which therefore brings about subversive effects on "people's sense" of solidarity and social security.<ref>https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12438</ref> 

Likewise, the rise of populism has been linked to economic insecurity brought about by neoliberal policies across the world. Neoliberalism has been linked to social decohesion and "increased outgroup derogation," this sentiment is primarily directed at the top ("the elites") and not against marginalized social groups. This resentment is mediated through a "sense of anomie and negative psychological interaction ((feelings of threat, unfairness, and hopelessness)."<ref>https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12311</ref>

A study using "General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008" found that Americans were broadly more happy during years with less income inequality than during years with more income inequality.<ref>Oishi, S., Kesebir, S., & Diener, E. (2011). Income Inequality and Happiness. ''Psychological Science'', 22(9), 1095-1100. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417262</ref>

Neoliberalism has been directly accused of being a project to restore class dominance by those "sectors that saw their fortunes threatened by the ascent of social democratic endeavors in the aftermath of the Second World War."<ref name="harvey">Harvey, D. (2007). Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. ''The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'', 610(1), 21-44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716206296780</ref> Likewise, Harvey (2007) found that neoliberalism has primarily led to a funneling of wealth "from subordinate classes to dominant ones and from poorer to richer countries."<ref name="harvey"/> This process of what Harvey (2007) calls "creative destruction" entailed the dissolution of institutions and narratives that promoted more "egalitarian distributive measures in the preceding era."<ref name="harvey"/>

===Basic resource insecurity and inaccessibility===
Neoliberalism is also criticized as leaving the price of basic resources (housing, healthcare, etc.) to monopolists and/or the market. Opponents of neoliberalism argue that the "free capitalist market" has no interest in guaranteeing basic human needs, and instead will only offer such goods/services at extortionate costs to buyers. Despite successes of neoliberalism, with overall wealth increasing in many segments of society, basic resource insecurity (outside processed food) in the USA is high. And the percentage of grown adults who are geographically independent of their immediate families has been decreasing since the 1980s in the USA, with the exception of a brief reversal of course during the private debt mania of the dot-com boom.<ref>https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/news/local/2020/03/08/study-young-adults-texas-living-home-parents-united-states/4974973002/</ref>

====Public housing gutting====
Public housing (also known as "HUD housing") in the USA was broadly expanded under FDR and this left the USA almost free from large-scale involuntary homelessness until the mid-1970s, when Nixon ordered a memoratorium on public housing during a period of rising crime across the entire country. Homelessness was also pretty rare among entire family units in the USA after public housing was implemented, but not after Reagan cut HUD's budget by half.  Nixon and Reagan were not alone in their hostility to public housing however. Virtually every presidential administration after LBJ has attempted to gut or privatize American public housing.

During 1976, President Jimmy Carter’s HUD secretary, Patricia Harris, was extremely hostile to new units of traditional public housing, stating, "We should make it clear that we are abandoning the whole notion of public housing".<ref>https://jacobin.com/2023/02/public-housing-new-york-affordable-rent-real-estate</ref>  While Harris limited new development of traditional public housing,<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zw7sz Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century]</ref> she also sought to expand Section 8 and keep existing traditional public housing from falling apart, often in defiance of Carter's budget tightening.  Carter and his Welfare Secretary were both more hostile than Harris to public housing, proposing a complete elimination in favor of Nixon's version of a UBI, which Harris pushed against.<ref name="in search">[https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctv14gpbjz From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America]</ref>

In the early 1980s, Reagan's administration made enormous cuts to HUD, making the availability of Section 8 vouchers (previously Section 23 vouchers and now known as HCV vouchers) something of a rarity across the United States.  Reagan had halved the entire budget for both Section 8 and traditional public housing.<ref>https://shelterforce.org/2004/05/01/reagans-legacy-homelessness-in-america/</ref> This dramatically increased homelessness.  Much of Reagan's cuts to public housing were more aggressive versions of Carter's proposed "triage" approach to defunding public housing.  Carter had proposed this in his ''National Agenda for the 1980s''.<ref name="in search" />

In 1999, Bill Clinton signed into law a ban on new public housing units beyond the amount present in 1999.<ref>https://nationalhomeless.org/repeal-faircloth-amendment/</ref> This major piece of psychopathic neoliberal legislation was done with Republican and Democratic support.  It is called the "Faircloth amendment" and directly amends the New Deal era law which effectively created public housing in the USA. Clinton was also supportive of the HOPE VI program, which further reduced public housing stock.  HOPE VI sought to replace public housing stock with public/private hybrid "revitalized affordable housing".  Less than 60% of HOPE VI housing had affordability levels equivalent to public housing.  Prior public housing tenants were also excluded from HOPE VI for other reasons, including through work requirement and credit score means testing.  At least 75% of affected public housing residents were immediately displaced by the HOPE VI program.  Hope VI had also demolished more affordable housing units than it had built by a factor of almost 200%.<ref>https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/27/we-deserve-have-place-live/how-us-underfunding-public-housing-harms-rights-new</ref>

President Obama and the Obama administration sought to raise the minimum rent of the poorest in public housing.<ref>https://www.cbpp.org/blog/obama-plan-to-raise-rents-on-rural-poor-is-the-wrong-way-to-save-money</ref>  This was eventually rejected in the Senate thanks to Barney Frank and Maxine Waters.  The Obama adminstration also attempted to privatize what little public housing is left in the USA through PETRA.  This scheme was supported by then HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and was intended to sell off public housing to banks, who could use complex mortgage schemes to finance public housing through the private market.  If passed, this would have also allowed banks to seize public housing wholesale and further limit access.

During 2017, President Trump signed an executive order urging public housing authorities to enforce work requirements,<ref>https://nlihc.org/resource/president-trump-signs-executive-order-work-requirements</ref> and the Trump administration attempted to cut funding to HUD (which administers and funds American public housing).<ref>https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/what-do-we-still-need-know-about-work-requirements-public-housing-agencies</ref>  Trump also bragged about moving public housing out of suburban areas.

During 2021, Democrat Maxine Waters introduced H.R. 4496, a sweeping bill to fully fund HCV vouchers to everyone who needs them.  She introduced this bill when Democrats had a majority in the House and Senate, and also held the presidency. However, only 1/3rd of House Democrats were co-sponsors on the bill (and zero Republican cosponsors),<ref>https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4496</ref> and no one in Congress seemed to lobby particularly hard for a floor vote.  This bill was re-introduced again in 2023<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/realestate/california-housing-laws-maxine-waters.html</ref> as H.R. 4232, with only a quarter of Dems as cosponsors<ref>https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr4232/cosponsors</ref> and again no floor vote was held.

Beyond Waters' public housing re-expansion bill losing Democratic support in Congress, current support for re-expansion among Democratic Party elite is unknown as there are shifting party standard-bearers. Kamala Harris has been involved in supporting what little exists of public housing in America, but along with Biden, avoids the topic of public housing to an unusual degree, even among other Democratic Party elite.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20220124040833/https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/2019-11_2020_Housing_Fremstad_and_Beaty.pdf</ref>  After the rise in homelessness during the Biden administration, small American third parties have capitalized on silence from major parties by explicitly promoting public housing expansion.  

Democratic Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has unsuccessfully tried to repeal the Faircloth amendment (which caps public housing units) while her party had a majority in the House and Senate during 2021.<ref>https://archinect.com/news/article/150205219/clinton-era-federal-public-housing-ban-one-step-closer-to-repeal</ref> Only 2 of her Democratic colleagues in the House cosponsored her effort, and 0 Republicans.<ref>https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/659/cosponsors</ref>  In total, there is mild to moderate, nominal Democratic support for re-expansion of HCV vouchers.  However, even if they got a successful floor vote for re-expansion of HCV vouchers, increased public housing stock is needed in areas where land demand or public housing stigma among landlords is high for such a public housing expansion to virtually eliminate homelessness and housing insecurity.

During 2025, Trump's HUD secretary Scott Turner argued against the use of public housing for long-term housing, incorrectly stating public housing was not originally designed in the USA with that in mind.  Like in Trump's prior turn, there is saber rattling about potential work requirements for HUD housing as well, albeit unlikely given over half of the millions of HUD housing occupants do not work any traditional job at all and they probably don't want to pour millions of families onto the streets before a midterm with a narrow majority.

====Adequate healthcare insecurity and inaccessibility====
The US healthcare industry was heavily privatized in the 1980s under the Reagan administration.<ref>https://pha.berkeley.edu/2018/12/06/the-effects-of-neoliberal-practices-on-public-health/</ref>

The Reagan administration was not oblivious to the negatives of privatization. They once notably tried to offset some of the social insecurities of lack of healthcare access by forcing emergency rooms in the USA to accept patients priced out from the healthcare market.<ref>https://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/reagans_healthcare_mandate/</ref> Millions of Americans who do not know about Medicaid, who have health problems (or entire body parts) not covered by Medicaid, or who are experiencing the [https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/25496/412587-Churning-under-the-ACA-and-State-Policy-Options-for-Mitigation.PDF churning] from [[Obamacare]], (a set of policies also criticized as neoliberal<ref>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27487835/</ref>) now seek healthcare primarily through emergency room visits or [[charity]] setups.

Today's adult generations in the USA, Generation X and later, born post-1965 (the first generations to experience their teens and young adulthood during a neoliberal era), are projected to experience more years of ill health than the prior "baby boomer" generation.<ref>https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/14/health/ill-health-baby-boomers-gen-x-wellness/index.html</ref> The current young adult and middle-aged adult generations in the US also projects they will not live as long as the current adult senior generation in the US.<ref>https://aperioncare.com/blog/millennials-on-aging/#:~:text=Only%2030%20percent%20of%20millennials,four%20years%20longer%2C%20on%20average.</ref>

The effects of neoliberalism has been linked to declining mental health rates.<ref name="zeria2022">Zeira A. Mental Health Challenges Related to Neoliberal Capitalism in the United States. ''Community Ment Health J.'' 2022 Feb;58(2):205-212. DOI 10.1007/s10597-021-00840-7. Epub 2021 May 25. PMID: 34032963; PMCID: PMC8145185.</ref> To quote Zeira (2022):

{{quotebox|Neoliberal capitalism incorporates theories of eliminating all restrictions on the market and decreasing government assistance programs as reported by Harvey [''A brief history of neoliberalism'', Oxford University Press, 2005]. Since then these policies have led to income inequality, disempowerment of workers, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, inadequate social services, mass incarceration and an expensive and ineffective healthcare system as reported by Case and Deaton [''Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism''. Princeton University Press, 2020] and Nkansah-Amankra et al. [''International Journal of Health Services'' 43(2):217-240, 2013]. Studies have shown that the consequences of these policies and ideologies likely have a role in increasing rates of mental illness. This paper will discuss how these factors increase mental distress and postulate ways that mental health professionals can advocate for change.<ref name="zeria2022"/>}}

Neoliberalism (specifically how it relates to consumer financial debt and the insidious linking of debt to personal failure) has also been linked to negative effects on ''physical'' health, this includes "blood pressure, adiposity, self-reported physical and emotional symptoms, depression, anxiety, and perceived stress, even when controlling for several socio-demographic confounders."<ref name="sweet2018">Elizabeth Sweet,
“Like you failed at life”: Debt, health and neoliberal subjectivity,
Social Science & Medicine,
Volume 212,
2018,
Pages 86-93,
ISSN 0277-9536,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.07.017.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953618303745)</ref> Sweet (2018) discusses these results "within the context of both neoliberal economic policies that funnel consumers into chronic debt and neoliberal sociocultural ideologies that promote self-judgments of indebtedness as personal failure."<ref name="sweet2018"/>

===Capitalist globalism and slavery of Third World peoples===
Neoliberalism in IR is often inextricably linked to neoliberalism in economics. A central tenant of economic neoliberalism is that global cooperation and expansion of capitalist market economies will unleash a river of prosperity to [[Third World]] countries and First World countries alike to due to increased market efficiency. Critics of neoliberal globalization say the utopian-sounding [[marketing]] of globalization is a cover for something else&nbsp;— namely, providing further practical opportunity for wealthy interests around the globe to enter and enslave poor countries to produce raw materials for them.<ref>https://www.e-ir.info/2015/03/21/what-is-neoliberalism-and-how-does-it-relate-to-globalization/</ref> Critics point to increases in [[slavery]] found when Africans provided raw materials to Europe via the Colombian exchange, for example.<ref>https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/effects-economic-globalization</ref> 

While neoliberals say capitalist globalization increases the living standards of developing countries, critics claim this does not apply to the poorest countries, which they point out, lose economic growth from capitalist globalization.<ref>https://sharing.org/information-centre/articles/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization</ref> Empirical evidence shows, however, that poor countries tend to catch up with rich countries if the poor countries have high human capital per person (in relation to their level of per capita [[GDP]]), but not otherwise,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Barro |first=Robert J. |date=1991 |title=Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2937943 |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |volume=106 |issue=2 |pages=407–443 |doi=10.2307/2937943 |issn=0033-5533}}</ref> and developing countries are set to account for nearly 60% of world GDP by 2030, with trade being one of the main factors behind this growth.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Economy : Developing countries set to account for nearly 60% of world GDP by 2030, according to new estimates - OECD |url=https://www.oecd.org/dev/pgd/perspectives-global-development-shifting-wealth-press-release.htm |access-date=2022-06-25 |website=www.oecd.org}}</ref> However, as stated above, inequality ''within'' countries has also risen just as inequality ''between'' countries has declined.<ref name="uninequality" />

There has been criticism of neoliberals prioritizing economic measurements like growth and [[inflation]] to measure the quality of life over social factors like [[labor]] rights<ref name="evans">{{cite journal |last=Evans |first=Peter |title=National Labor Movements and Transnational Connections: Global Labor's Evolving Architecture Under Neoliberalism |journal=IRLE Working Paper |date=2014 |volume=5 |issue=116–114 |doi=10.15173/glj.v5i3.2283 |url=https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/2283 |doi-access=free}}</ref> and broad access to tertiary [[education]].<ref>Levidow, Les (January 30, 2003). ''The Virtual University?: Knowledge, Markets, and Management.'' Oxford University Press. {{isbn|0199257930}}.</ref>{{rp|227-248}} The criticism regarding labor is that neoliberalism has eroded worker's rights worldwide and has also led to an erosion of the power of organized labor at a national level.<ref name="evans"/> However, the neoliberal era has also brought about a transnational alliance of labor solidarity between worker movements in the US and elsewhere (some of the cited examples include links between labor in the States and the Honduran CGT or the Bridgestone-Firestone workers in [[Liberia]]) or the involvement of [[Brazilian]] labor activists in European labor campaigning.<ref name="evans"/> Some other criticisms is that prioritizing economic efficiency can compromise other factors or perhaps even promote factors such as exploitation or social injustice.<ref>Springer, Simon; Birch, Kean; MacLeavy, Julie, eds. (2016). ''The Handbook of Neoliberalism''. Routledge. {{isbn|978-1138844001}}.</ref>{{rp|617}}

===Vocal, individual critics===
Prominent critics of neoliberalism include the [[linguist]] [[Noam Chomsky]] (who often focuses on neoliberalism's imposition on poorer countries by the IMF and others in the form of the "Washington Consensus"), the [[philosopher]] [[Slavoj Žižek]], the [[environmentalist]] [[George Monbiot]], and the left-wing commentator Paul Mason. More modern critics of neoliberalism include the [[Post-Keynesian economics|Modern Monetary Theory]] school of economics, which includes [[Bernie Sanders]]' former economic advisor Stephanie Kelton, and Glen Weyl, a former [[Ayn Rand]] fan who seeks to take the best neoliberal ideas and discard the worst ones, and to combine ideas from the left and right in [[radical]] new ways.

Other vocal critics of neoliberalism include:
{{collist|2|
*Sociologist [[Pierre Bourdieu]]
*Politician [[Jeremy Corbyn]]
*Early [[Michel Foucault]] (before becoming an advocate of neoliberalism)
*The late journalist and author David Graeber
*Author David Harvey
*Professor of law Jane Kelsey
*Author [[Naomi Klein]]
*Former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador
*Historian Philip Mirowski
*Doctor and politician [[Jill Stein]]
*Economist Joseph Stiglitz
*Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer
}}

==External links==
*[[George Monbiot]], [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems]. ''[[The Guardian]]'', Apr. 15, 2016

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Objectivism]]

Categories: Liberalism, Objectivism