Is the much discussed populism that is emerging from the ruins of the
neoliberal order simply a right-wing phenomenon, as it may seem given the prominence gained by the politics of hate of Trump and Le Pen?
More generally,
neoliberals, apparently worried about adverse incentive effects, have opposed welfare measures that would have protected the losers.
They added: "The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut growth, the very thing that the
neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting.
Do people really want an economic system that is not
neoliberal in orientation, in favor of the current system characterized by heavy state intervention?
Neoliberalism has its origins in the Mont Pelerin Society, which was formed by Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek in 1947, and whose luminaries included other icons of
neoliberal thought such as Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman.
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: HAYEK, FRIEDMAN, AND THE BIRTH OF
NEOLIBERAL POLITICS
Although American
neoliberals celebrated Milton Friedman's and George Stigler's famous 1946 essay attacking rent control, "Roofs or Ceilings?
Conservatives also have become increasingly hostile to immigration, which the early
neoliberals saw as integral to an open society.
Neoliberals themselves tend not to welcome the label '
neoliberal'.
But the
neoliberal intellectuals ignored the reality of monopoly capitalism and the class struggle between the big bourgeoisie and the working class.
It took the postwar involvement of American thinkers like Milton Friedman to yield a distinct set of
neoliberal ideas, defined as "monetarism, deregulation, and market-based reforms.
This diverse ideological and regional representation may account for the fact that many of the IAD's Latin directors do not consider themselves
neoliberals, with some serving in nominally social democratic governments.
