Beyond Neoliberalism: Exploring New Economic Paradigms for an Unequal Nation

Ask a person on the street what they think about neoliberalism and you are likely to receive a blank stare. But while the term might be obscure and its strict definition debatable, neoliberalism’s impact has been profound.

We can argue about what to include in the bundle of neoliberal ideas and policies, but chief among them are deregulation of business and finance, laissez faire economics, globalized free trade and corporate attacks on union labor. Some thinkers have examined how even our own selves have been turned into a commodity whereby we develop our personal “assets,” and enhance our “human capital” through punishing regimes of improvement and self-evaluation.

Over the next three weeks Capital & Main will talk with three authors about how the ideas, values and policies of neoliberalism have come to dominate our politics and economics for over 50 years and describe the price that we have paid for failing to craft a more just alternative.

Gary Gerstle is an historian, Bob Kuttner is an economist and journalist and Valerie Wilson is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. In these wide ranging discussions, we will explore not just neoliberalism’s growth and impact, but the avenues for challenging its command over our lives.

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