OK. This might be where I bore you all with my adherence to none mainstream economics again.
In my emails today was one from Prof. Steve Keen, whose blog I subscribe to.
His latest blog is called The Failure of Neoliberalism
Keen has built a computer model which analyses countries' performance on a number of levels; growth, inflation, private debt, public debt, unemployment and others. He inputs real data for analysis.
What he has found is that, ever since the mid 1970s, when Keynesianism was abandoned by very many countries in favour of monetarism, neo liberal economic theory their performance has diminished by most measures and have failed to achieve the same levels as when previously informed by Keynesian economics.
This is the preamble to his reporting
Several common themes turn up in almost all countries in these plots. First and foremost, the shift from so-called "Keynesian" to "Neoclassical/Neoliberal" economic policies that began in the mid-1970s, which was supposed to unleash the private sector from the shackles of the State, has failed on its own terms. The rate of economic growth under Neoliberalism—which I date from the beginning of 1975, when a surge in inflation empowered the political and academic rise of Milton Friedman's "Monetarism"—has been lower for every country in this database. Rather than the Neoclassicals showing the Keynesians how to promote growth, the Neoclassicals have shown how to turn real economic performance into permanent financial speculation:
A reminder. Keynes basically said that state spending would drive growth and that full employment was an essential part of that.
Neoliberal economics are based on minimal state spending, restriction of the money supply, the primacy of markets and private enterprise, and the use of unemployment to reduce demand in the event of inflation.
I don't like copying and pasting large chunks of other people's blogs. It is here if you want more detail (you may have to subscribe to read it, but he allows 'free' subscriptions which give access to selected posts)
profstevekeen.substack.com/p/the-failure-of-neoliberalism
We just aren't going to get out of the current economic mess that we are in until the government abandons it neoliberal economic thinking (and that would apply to any incoming Labour or coalition government)
Government will have to spend and would be wise to stop telling us that taxation funds spending and we can't afford to spend without raising taxes. Because it is not true.
