ABSTRACT

Neoliberalism represents a reassertion of the liberal political economic beliefs of the 19th century in the contemporary era (Clark, 2005). In the United States, the dominant neoliberal public philosophy that has emerged in recent decades is that of Market Fundamentalism, which Block (2007) defines as “a vastly exaggerated belief in the ability of self regulating markets to solve social problems.” Such a philosophy replaces a notion of society with the marketplace and supports deregulation, tax cuts, and a retrenchment of public services (Block, 2007). The authors in this part trace the reassertion of liberal economic beliefs, globalization, and the rise of Market Fundamentalism in the United States through analysis of policies regarding debt, austerity, taxation, employment, and the privatization of public services, an agenda that has resulted in the deepening of poverty and economic inequalities in the United States. In “Transnational Factors Driving U.S. Inequality and Poverty,” Rubin Patterson and Giselle Thompson call attention to the growing poverty in the U.S. and a reversal of the more than 150-year trend of generational gains in income and social mobility. They indicate that approximately one hundred million Americans, one-third of the U.S. population, are poor or nearly poor. They attribute these trends in inequality and poverty to the convergence of a number of factors: the financialization of the economy, the transnationalization of capitalism, deindustrialization, the automation of production, the deunionization of the workforce, rising consumer debt, the democratization of higher education, and the racialization of people of color for the purposes of electoral politics. In “The Discursive Axis of Neoliberalism: Debt, Deficits, and Austerity,” Shawn Cassiman continues the analysis of neoliberal globalization by examining the discursive constructions of debt, deficits, and austerity within and in support of this system. Using Europe as an illustrative example, she discusses the relatively recent turn toward austerity driven by the European Commission, IMF, and European Central Bank. She extends her discussion to the United States’ debt crisis and argues that it is an outcome of global capitalism-thus the response needs to come from outside of that logic-and offers the Occupy Wall Street movement’s debt refusal campaign as an alternative to the neoliberal austerity discourse. Similarly, in “Beyond Coincidence: How Neoliberal Policy Initiatives in the IMF and World Bank Affected U.S. Poverty Levels,” Pamela Blackmon discusses the rise of neoliberal policies of the IMF and the World Bank during the 1980s. These policies were advanced on global and domestic levels by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the United Kingdom and

the United States respectively. On a global level, Blackmon argues that such policies resulted in increased poverty in the countries that followed these policies. Blackmon explores the degree to which a neoliberal shift occurred in U.S. domestic policies during the Reagan administration. She concludes that the decreased funding and deregulation of education, changes in transfer programs for the poor, and the decreases to top marginal income tax rates that characterized the Reagan-era policies contributed to increases in income inequality and poverty in the United States. Recognizing taxation as a political practice, Kasey Henricks and Victoria Brockett argue that it is a vehicle of social control that organizes, maintains, and supports inequality over time. In “The House Always Wins: How State Lotteries Displace American Tax Burdens by Class and Race,” they focus on the role of lotteries in the United States and its social consequences for public finance. In their analysis, they detail the fiscal trends, particularly those induced by neoliberal policies, that created optimal conditions for lotteries to emerge as an alternative tax strategy to finance public services. They conclude that a lottery-based taxation scheme shifts the financial burden of public services away from elite interests to the racially and economically marginalized populations that play the lottery the most, replacing more progressive sources of state income, such as corporate and property taxes. Similar to other authors in this part, Intae Yoon argues that the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1981 heralded in an era of neoliberal policies that resulted in increased income inequality and economic injustice. In “Consumer Credits as a Quasi-Welfare System for Failed Neoliberals’ Trickle-down Policies Between the 1980s and 2000s,” Yoon focuses on the deregulation of financial institutions, the dismantling of anti-trust laws, and deregulation of consumer credit markets, which he argues resulted in the increased vulnerability of lowand middle-income families and widening income gaps. The confluence of these policies and trends created a context in which low-and middle-income families turned to consumer credit as a quasi-safety net, while deregulated financial institutions expanded consumer credits to all income strata for more profits. Also focusing on consumer credit and financial institutions, Howard Karger examines how the poor are often steered towards fringe services, such as shortterm loans, check cashing, car loans, and tax refund services offered by peripheral financial institutions. These financial services are characterized by high user fees and extortionate interest rates, which Karger concludes are predatory in nature since they further impoverish borrowers, rather than provide financial products that help to build assets and increase household wealth. In this chapter, Karger provides an overview of some fringe economy services and the impact of neoliberal ideas on predatory lending, and concludes with possible approaches to restrain the depletion of resources from the already poor. The chapters in this part contributed by Ashish Singh and Andrew Seligsohn and Joan Maya Mazelis examine the effects of globalization and neoliberal policies on their analysis of trends of employment and public service provision at national and local levels. In “Globalization and the Trends in Inequality of Poverty in the United States in the Last Decade,” Singh examines inequality and poverty in the United States within the context of globalization, through an analysis of changes in the unemployment-population ratio, unemployment rate, loss of employment (and subsequent re-employment), and average weeks of unemployment. The findings of her analyses indicate increases in poverty for all racial and ethnic groups and family types, as well as native and foreign born, in all regions. While Singh’s analysis indicates rising rates of poverty for all racial and ethnic groups, as well as family types, she found that the gap in poverty between Blacks and Whites, as well as across family types, significantly increased during 2002-2011. Furthermore, she found that all of the unemployment indicators included in her analysis increased considerably for the same time period, with the exception of re-employment of displaced workers, which significantly decreased.