i was reading through my daily briefing on the NYT when the term “neoliberalism” came up. i know what liberal means in the political sense, and tried googling neoliberalism to get a better understanding, but the explanations didn’t make sense to me. help?
In: 0
Neoliberalism is a term that refers to the policies typified by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US in the early 1980s, where government regulation was rolled back in favor of free market approaches. The overarching principle is “freedom”, which is taken to mean freedom from government intrusion on market forces (hence the “liberal”). Specific neoliberal policies include the elimination of price controls, deregulation of capital markets, lowering trade barriers like tariffs, and otherwise reducing government’s influence on the economy. There is some disagreement about how to use the term today, but that is where it began and what it referenced and the meaning today is derived from that.
Latest Answers