• Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    reminder that neolibs advocate keeping unemployment up on purpose to suppress wages and contrive a reserve army of labor who will scab out of desperation in the event of unionization drives

    • FlakesBongler [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      When I was in high school and taking an economics class, my teacher explained it to us that very low unemployment is a bad thing that only happens in bad places

      When I asked how forcing some people out of the labor market to artificially keep wages low is any different than laws mandating price ceilings or rent control in terms of fucking with the free market, you could see the gears grinding to a halt in his head

      • captcha [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        My econ 101 teacher showed us a short film titled "Rent control". It depicted a landlord murdering his tenants after collecting a key deposit. It was implied that rent control was the problem.

        Wilder than actually being made to watch that was the fact that some econ students had made that for a project.

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Neoliberal ideology doesn’t advocate for a complete free market without any state intervention, that’s the oldest Classical Liberal ideology. Neoliberal ideology allows the bourgeois state to meddle in the market as long as it does it on behalf of the bourgeoise.

        Hence artificially suppressing inflation is fine. Propping up banks and corporations and socializing their losses is fine. Artificially increasing unemployment is fine.

        • LeninsRage [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I mean in truth neoliberal is just an ideological front for class warfare in practice.

          But ideologically neoliberalism very much does conceive of itself as a return to late 19th century "classical liberal" principles. Its just that they constantly violate their own so-called principles routinely because their ideology is dumb and wrong and fails constantly. But they pretend the logic is sound every time.

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Nah something like a fiat currency controlled by a central bank with price controls to manipulate the economy was definitely not acceptable to a Classic Liberal, while it is the center of Neoliberal thought. There is a difference

        • FlakesBongler [they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Something along the lines of "It's fine when companies do it, but it's authoritarian when governments do it"

          Which is precisely the moment I lost respect for him

          Now my history teacher who was a full-blown Marxist and would let me skip class, he was great

    • Shoegazer [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      They also support keeping inflation at a certain level to encourage “economic growth”

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Which is bad policy, but... like... how do you have a proven effective casual relationship between interest rates and unemployment, unemployment and wages/union membership and then implement a policy that exploits this relationship consistently and effectively

      And after all this insist "Economics isn't a science".