Neoliberalism is the name given to the policies set up by multinational corporations and big banking.  It is neither new nor liberal, but rather seeks to return reset the clock back to 1900, when the robber barons were free to plunder.  As George Bernard Shaw observed, “Every trade organization is a conspiracy against the people.”  What makes neoliberalism inordinately effective is its financing and relationship to the media and the influence it has with the politicians of the leading industrial countries in the world.

This face of capitalism with its entrails in world politics has rather than fostered development in the third world or improve conditions in the industrial countries, has instead ground its own axe, and thereby expanded their economic dominance of multinational corporations and big banking around the world with the consequence that the increase in productivity through technological advances has not resulted in a corresponding increase in the standard of living.   The reality is quite different than their propaganda.  All but the top 2% has been shortchanged by neoliberalism. 

They have a vision of a level field:  no barriers to foreign ownership including basic services such as water and electricity, and to banking, and to trade.  Also on their agendas is one currency, one set of laws, minimal government, no unions, and no government mandated workers’ benefits.  This includes minimal regulations of the workplace including pollutants and working conditions.  Part of this vision including the right to void environmental laws has been approved by our government in the NAFTA and other free trade agreements.  Neoliberalism is about a level field, one where every manufacturer in a developed country (and thus their industrial laborer and skilled workers) would be competing with manufacturers in China an India, and thus paying a comparable wage with comparable benefits.  They are about profits and growth, and thus not concerned about the conditions within a country or the lives of its peoples.  They are the robber barons born again.  It is not what the robber barons once built or the neoliberals build today, but rather where we would be without them.  Greg Palast describe the toll we pay the neoliberals for what we build—jk.