“WTF just happened?”
Did the beginning of the end of neo-liberalism just happen? One can hope.
The US result looks like the ultimate endpoint if the wealth of a commonwealth is not evenly enough distributed. The Democrats can be thankful they were voted out of office. Obscenely wealthy Marie-Antoinette was beheaded! Not that the Republicans are any less to blame. Trump won’t help those left-behind but, by voting, the left-behinds look like destroying the system. We can but hope that out of the ruins something better will come.
Could it happen in Australia? Once, we had proper essential and social services. But in the great asset sell-offs to align with the false “government bad, privatisation good” neo-liberal agenda, Australia’s common wealth was shifted (stolen?) by political lobbying and government law-making into fewer and fewer hands to the detriment of more and more people – our own version of those left behind. Lobbyists and politicians destroyed unions and people’s faith in them but it was unions that could have held the line by demanding a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work – a rightful share in our common wealth.
At the crossroads, do we really want to continue down the neo-liberal path?
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