Abstract
This chapter introduces the main argument of the book and explains how it is organised.
The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state—minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions—just happen to be the conditions to make the rich even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim (Monbiot, 2016: 217–8).
What brought about this revolution was a successful intellectual and political movement, which used a set of ideas to take advantage of these crises (Konczal, 2021: 138).
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Notes
- 1.
Levelling Up the United Kingdom Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities 2 February 2022 (see Chap. 7).
- 2.
See Harvey (2005), Lansley (2011), Gordon (2016), Pettifor (2017) and Dorling (2021) for general surveys. For the effect on world trade, see Pettifor (2006). For savings, see Eggertsson et al. (2018). For the association of financialisation with financial crises, see Reid et al. (2017). For market concentration, see Tepper with Hearn (2019). For fraud, see Callahan (2004); Whyte and Wiegratz (2016); Toms (2019). For crime generally, see Wilkinson and Pickett (2009 and 2018) and Dorward (2019). For inequality, see Piketty (2014 and 2020), Atkinson (2015), Baker (2016), Brown, R. (2017). For trust, see Edelman Trust (2022).
- 3.
Prasad (2018: 30) quotes President Kennedy in 1962:
It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan [has] borne this out. This country’s own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.
- 4.
We shall consider in Chap. 7 the irony that most of these individuals have elite backgrounds and once in power have often canvassed pro-elite policies.
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Brown, R. (2022). What This Book Is About. In: The Conservative Counter-Revolution in Britain and America 1980-2020. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09142-1_1
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