A dude
named Tim McKaskell made a video called “Neoliberalism as a Waterballoon”
(Click here for the video) in 2010, and he really hit the nail on the head in
his explanation on how Neoliberalism works.
Basically,
pre-Neoliberal societies were held up by a metaphorical “social safety net”
that kept the people on the bottom rungs of the social ladder above the poverty
line (also metaphorical). This social safety net is being supported by taxes,
most of which comes from higher income people.
Now, the
high-income people are all like “I make the most money because I work the
hardest. Why should I be penalized for it by paying more taxes? Because POOR
PEOPLE ARE LAZY. That’s why they’re poor.”
And I’m all
like “I work at McDonald’s for minimum wage and I swear we work harder than
surgeons.”
Moral of
the story: Hard work doesn’t always translate into big money.
Anyway,
rich people who are fed up with paying a fraction of their massive incomes in
taxes start to lobby for politicians who are behind this philosophy (money =
power), and eventually these politicians get into power and slowly start to
change state-handled public services into privatized hands. Now, instead of
social services such as shelters and addiction centres being handled by the
state, they are handled by private companies who are in it for the money, or
maybe even completely eliminated.
It’s a
double whammy too – as the taxes get cut lower and lower, the social safety net
deteriorates, dropping more and more people under the poverty line. So not only
are there no social services to help the poor, there’s more poor. You could
imagine the implications this would have on lower class people.
References
McKaskell, T. (Director). (2011). Neoliberalism as a
Water Balloon. Youtube.
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