For a recent interview in The Nation, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Kate Yoon discuss Melinda Cooper’s latest book, Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here te read the full interview with Cooper. An excerpt appears below:
“What is new in this book is the focus on the fiscal and monetary dimensions of the long neoliberal counterrevolution. I am trying to map the various budgetary mechanisms that were deployed by neoliberals to rein in, blunt, or neutralize the promise of the left-wing social revolt. These mechanisms include tax and expenditure limitations on state and local governments; supermajority voting rules on taxation; the balanced budget ideal at the federal level; the central bank taboo against real wage inflation; and the benign neglect of asset price inflation. While these may look like highly technocratic and politically neutral instruments, they were used in very targeted ways to disenfranchise certain populations and empower others.
My basic argument is that neoliberals of different stripes managed to create a regime of extreme public spending austerity for those primarily dependent on wage income, while at the same time ushering in a regime of radical spending and monetary extravagance for financial asset owners. We tend to see only the austerity side of the equation—hence the illusion that this is all about the retreat of the state. But it’s hard to explain the extreme wealth concentration that has occurred in recent decades if we don’t also understand the multiple ways in which financial wealth is actively subsidized by the state.”