Impacts

A2: No Impacts
The Neoliberal agenda wants to hide the impacts that it causes on the individual and community only for the gain of Neoliberals-Reject Fake Radicalism claims because only a pure kirtik of Neoliberalism can solve. Hall 2011
[Stuart, Hall is an emeritus professor at the Open University. Born in Jamaica and a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he was director of the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham until 1997. He was the first editor of New Left Review, and in 1995 was one of three founding editors of Soundings, Monday 12 September 2011, The March of the Neoliberals, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals]
We are living through an extraordinary political situation: the end of the debt-fuelled boom, the banking crisis of 2007-10, the defeat of New Labour and the rise to power of a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition. What sort of crisis is this? Is it a serious wobble in the trickle-down, win-win, end-of-boom-and-bust economic model that has dominated global capitalism? Does it presage business as usual, the deepening of present trends, or the mobilisation of social forces for a radical change of direction? Is this the start of a new conjuncture? My argument is that the present situation is another unresolved rupture of that conjuncture which we can define as "the long march of the Neoliberal Revolution". Each crisis since the 1970s has looked different, arising from specific historical circumstances. However, they also seem to share some consistent underlying features, to be connected in their general thrust and direction of travel. Paradoxically, such opposed political regimes as Thatcherism and New Labour have contributed in different ways to expanding this project. Now the coalition is taking up the same cause.

Neoliberalism is grounded in the "free, possessive individual", with the state cast as tyrannical and oppressive. The welfare state, in particular, is the arch enemy of freedom. The state must never govern society, dictate to free individuals how to dispose of
their private property, regulate a free-market economy or interfere with the God-given right to make profits and amass personal wealth. State-led "social engineering" must never prevail over corporate and private interests. It must not intervene in the "natural" mechanisms of the free market, or take as its objective the amelioration of free-market capitalism's propensity to create inequality. According to the neoliberal narrative, the welfare state mistakenly saw its task as intervening in the economy, redistributing wealth, universalising life-chances, attacking unemployment, protecting the socially vulnerable, ameliorating the condition of oppressed or maginalised groups and addressing social injustice. Its do-gooding, utopian sentimentality enervated the nation's moral fibre, and eroded personal responsibility and the overriding duty of the poor to work. State intervention must never compromise the right of private capital to grow the business, improve share value, pay dividends and reward its agents with enormous salaries, benefits and bonuses. The formation of a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition in May 2010 was fully in line with the dominant political logic of realignment. In the spirit of the times, Cameron, with Blair as his role model, signalled his determination to reposition the Tories as a "compassionate conservative party", though this has turned out to be something of a chimera. At the same time, many underestimated how deeply being out of office and power had divided the Lib Dem soul. Coalition now set the neoliberal-inclined Orange Book supporters, who favoured an alliance with the Conservatives, against the "progressives", including former social democrats, who leaned towards Labour. A deal its detail now forgotten was stitched up, in which the social liberals were trounced, and Cameron and Clegg "kissed hands" in the No 10 rose garden (the former looking like the cat that had swallowed the cream). The Lib Dems thus provided the Cameron leadership with the fig leaf it needed while the banking crisis gave the alibi. The coalition government seized the opportunity to launch the most radical, far-reaching and irreversible social revolution since the war. Coalition policy often seems incompetent, with failures to think things through or join things up. But ,

from another angle, it is arguably the best prepared, most wide-ranging, radical and ambitious of the three regimes that, since the 1970s, have been maturing the neoliberal project. The Conservatives had for some time been devoting themselves to preparing for office not in policy detail but in terms of how policy could be used in power to legislate into effect a new political settlement . They had convinced themselves that deep, fast cuts would have to be made to satisfy the bond markets and international assessors. But could the crisis be used, as the
rightwing economist Milton Friedman had suggested, to "produce real change"? The legislative avalanche began immediately and has not let up. It begins negatively ("the mess the previous government left us") but ends positively, in embracing radical structural reform as the solution. Ideology

is in the driving seat, though vigorously denied. The front-bench ideologues Osborne, Lansley, Gove, Maude, Duncan Smith, Pickles, Hunt are saturated in neoliberal ideas and determined to give them legislative effect. As One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest put it: "The crazies are in charge of the asylum." They are single-minded about the irreversible transformation of society, ruthless about the means, and in denial about the fallout. Osborne smirking, clever,
cynical, "the smiler with the knife" wields the chopper with zeal. Cameron relaxed, plausible, charming, confident, a silver-spooned patrician, "a smooth man" fronts the coalition TV show. This crew long ago accepted Schumpeter's adage that there is no alternative to "creative destruction". They have given themselves, through legislative manoeuvring, an uninterrupted five years to accomplish this task. Its wide-ranging character must be judged in terms of the operational breadth of the institutions and practices they aim to "reform", their boldness in siphoning state-funding to the private sector, and the number of constituencies they are prepared to confront.

Reform and choice the words already hijacked by New Labour are the master

narrative . They may be Conservatives but this is not a conserving regime (it is a bemused Labour that is toying with the "blue-Labour" conservative
alternative now). Tories and Lib-Dems monotonously repeat the dissembling mantras of their press and public relations people: "We are clearing up the mess inherited from the previous government." But the

neoliberal engine is at full throttle. We cannot deal with the cuts in any detail here. They have only just started and there is much more to come. Instead we limit ourselves to tracking the neoliberal logic behind the strategy. First, targeted constituencies ie

anyone associated with, relying or dependent on the state and public services . For the rich, the recession never happened . For the public sector, however, there will be massive redundancies, a wage freeze, pay running well behind the rate of inflation, pensions that will not survive in their present form, rising retirement ages. Support for the less well off and the vulnerable will be whittled away, and welfare dependency broken. Benefits will be capped, workfare will be enforced. The old must sell homes to pay for care; working parents must buy childcare; and incapacity-benefit recipients must find work. Sure Start, the schools refurbishment programme and the Education Maintenance Allowance scheme are on hold. Wealthy parents can
buy children an Oxbridge education: but many other students will go into lifelong debt to get a degree. You cannot make 20bn savings in the NHS without affecting frontline, clinical and nursing services. Andrew Lansley, however, "does not recognise that figure". Similarly, though everybody else knew that most universities would charge the maximum 9,000 tuition fees, David "Two-Brains" Willetts doesn't recognise that figure. Saying that square pegs fit into round holes has become a front-bench speciality. Women stand where many of these savage lines intersect. As Beatrix Campbell reminds us, cutting the state means minimising the arena in which women can find a voice, allies, social as well as material support; and in which their concerns can be recognised. It means reducing the resources society collectively allocates to children, to making children a shared responsibility, and to the general "labour" of care and love .

Second, there is privatisation returning public and state services to private capital, redrawing the social architecture. The Blair government was an innovator here. To avoid the political hassle of full privatisation, it found you could simply burrow beneath
the state/market distinction. Outsourcing, value for money and contract contestability opened the doors through which private capital could slip into the public sector and hollow it out from within. Privatisation

now comes in three sizes: (1) straight sell-off of public assets; (2) contracting out to private companies for profit; (3) two-step privatisation by stealth, where it is represented as an unintended consequence. Some examples: in criminal justice, contracts for running prisons are being auctioned off
and, in true neoliberal fashion, Ken Clarke says he cannot see any difference in principle whether prisons are publicly or privately owned; in healthcare, the private sector is already a massive, profit-making presence, having cherry-picked for profit medical services that hospitals can no longer afford to provide; while in the most far-reaching, top-down NHS reorganisation, GPs, grouped into private consortia (part of whose profits they retain), will take charge of the 60bn health budget. Since few GPs know how, or have time, to run complex budgets, they will "naturally" turn to the private health companies, which are circling the NHS like sharks waiting to feed. Primary Care Trusts, which represented a public interest in the funding process, are being scrapped. In the general spirit of competition, hospitals must remove the cap on the number of private patients they treat. Third,

the lure of "localism". In line with David Cameron's Big Society, "free schools" (funded from the public purse Gove's revenge) will "empower" parents and devolve power to "the people". But parents beset as they are by pressing domestic and care responsibilities, and lacking the capacity to run schools, assess good teaching, define balanced curricula, remember much science or the new maths, or speak a foreign language, while regarding history as boring, and not having read a serious novel since GCSE will have to turn to the private education sector to manage schools and define the school's "vision". Could the two-step logic be clearer? Fourth, phoney populism: pitching communities against local democracy . Eric Pickles intends to wean councils permanently off the
central grant system. Meanwhile, social housing is at a standstill, housing benefits will be cut and council rents allowed to rise to commercial levels in urban centres.

Many will move to cheaper rentals, losing networks of friends, child support, family, school friends and school places. Parents must find alternative employment locally if there is any or allow extra travelling time. Jobseekers' allowances will be capped. As the private housing lobby spokesperson said: "We are looking forward to a bonanza." Since the early days of Thatcher we have not seen such a ferocious onslaught on the fabric of civil society, relationships and social life. Fifth, cutting down to size state involvement in quality of life. Amenities such as libraries, parks, swimming baths, sports facilities, youth clubs and community centres will either be privatised or disappear. Either unpaid volunteers will "step up to the plate" or doors will close. In truth, the aim is not in the jargon of 1968 from which the promiscuous Cameron is not ashamed to borrow to "shift power to the people ", but to undermine the structures of local democracy . The left, which feels positively about volunteering, community involvement and
participation and who doesn't? finds itself once again triangulated into uncertainty. The concept of the Big Society is so empty that universities have been obliged to put it at the top of their research agenda on pain of a cut in funding presumably so that politicians can discover what on earth it means: a shabby, cavalier, duplicitous interference in freedom of thought. What is intended is a permanent revolution.

Drug War Impact

US Neoliberal Agriculture is the root cause of the Drug War By Jenny OConnor 4/11/13
[A Research Associate in the Innovation and Enterprise Group at the Imperial College Business School. She is working on the Technology Adoption work package of the interdepartmental Digital City Exchange Project, before joining Imperial College, Jenny completed her ESRCfunded PhD in Geography and a MRes in Environment and Development at King's College London, The U.S. War On Communism, Drugs, And Terrorism In Colombia Analysis, Eurasia Review, http://www.eurasiareview.com/11042013-the-u-s-war-on-communism-drugs-andterrorism-in-colombia-analysis/]

The U.S. has long held a policy of pushing neoliberal economic polices in Latin America. This has been achieved as a result of NGO activity, strategically allocated aid, coercive interventions, qualified conditions attached to International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank loans, and bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements attached to partnership agrements. There is substantial literature exposing the resultant social stratification these policies have brought about in Latin America [4] but one particular effect of neoliberalism is that it has directly resulted in increased cultivation of coca for export. The neoliberal model aims to re-orientate agricultural production to the export market. While neoliberal policies want to remove protective tariff barriers on agricultural goods, subsidized U.S. agricultural imports make such a reproach difficult for domestically produced crops. Larger farms and ranches with sufficient resources can move into
growing large scale export crops, such as coffee, but these crops are soon found to be more labor intensive, require more land, and cost more when it comes to transportation. Many

small farmers and peasants, therefore, find that the only economic area in which they can maintain a competitive advantage is in the cultivation of coca. This was also evident in
Mexico after President Carlos Salinas de Gotari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). U.S. subsidized corn imports undermined Mexicos domestic agriculturalists could not afford to invest in the production of other export crops began growing illicit d rugs or left their rural plots for the city. Therefore, a

lack of employment opportunities pushed many rural immigrants into the hands of the drug traffickers. If the United States wished to reduce the cultivation of coca in Colombia, the most effective
policy would be to redirect military aid into funding government subsidization of legal crops, even though the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement prohibits such action. Under this agreement, which was signed in 2006 and came into effect on May 15, 2012, Colombia is obliged to dismantle all of its domestic protections, while the United States is permitted to maintain its own agricultural subsidiesan unfair advantage in the trade of agricultural products. In 2010, Oxfam International commissioned a study, which revealed the unequal terms of this trade pact. It demonstrated that the agreement would lower the prices local farmers would receive for major crops such as corn and beans, which would reduce domestic cultivation of these crops and substantially impact the income and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Colombian peasant farmers. [5]

Democracy Impact
Neoliberalism creates false democracy Fidel Castro JUNE 4, 2002
[Biggest Baller in Cuba/ Showed up the US/ Homeboy for the Soviets/ The guy that smokes those one cigars from the pictures, Cuba, the US and Democracy, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/06/02/cuba-the-us-and-democracy/]

Mr. W. should be ashamed to call those societies where corruption, inequality and injustice prevail, and which are being destroyed by the neoliberal model , examples of independence, freedom and democracy! For Mr. W . democracy only exists where money solves everything and where those who can afford a $25,000 a plate dinner an insult to the billions of people living in the poor, hungry and underdeveloped world are the ones called to solve the problems of society and the world, the same that will determine the fate of a great nation like the United States, and the rest of the planet. Dont you be a fool, Mr. W.
Show some respect for the minds of people who are capable of thinking. Read some of the 100 thousand letters sent to you by our children. Do not insult Jose Marti. Do not invoke his sacred name in vain. Stop using his phrases out of context in your speeches. Show some respect for others and for yourself. The

criminal blockade he has promised to tighten will only multiply the honor and glory of our people against which their wicked plans will smash, I assure you. Compatriots: In the face of dangers and threats, long live today more
than ever the Socialist Revolution!

Individuality Impact
Neoliberalism has exploited the individual causing change in Political Discourse Stuart Hall 4/23/2013
[Stuart Hall is an emeritus professor at the Open University. Born in Jamaica and a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he was director of the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham until 1997. He was the first editor of New Left Review, and in 1995 was one of three founding editors of Soundings, The Kilburn Manifesto: our challenge to the neoliberal victory, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/kilburn-manifesto-challenge-neoliberal-victory] The crisis has revealed a new, international and ethnically diverse super-rich. The Sunday Times Rich List is topped by two Russian oligarchs and an Indian billionaire. They live a life totally divorced from and almost unimaginable by ordinary people, fuelled by an apparently unstoppable appetite for profit. Neoliberalism's

victory has depended on the boldness and ambition of global capital, on its confidence that it can now govern not just the economy but the whole of social life. On the back of a
revamped liberal political and economic theory, its champions have constructed a vision and a new common sense that have permeated society. Market

forces have begun to model institutional life and press deeply into our private lives , as

well as dominating political discourse . They have shaped a popular culture that extols celebrity and success and promotes values of private gain and possessive individualism. They have thoroughly undermined the redistributive egalitarian consensus that underpinned the welfare state, with painful consequences for socially vulnerable groups such as women, old people, the young and ethnic minorities . Corporate exploitation of cheap labour, natural resources and land has worsened the crisis in the developing world. Environmental degradation, poverty, disease pandemics, poor education, ethnic divisions and civil wars are paraded as inevitable postcolonial failures and provoke the old powers to intervene to safeguard the conditions for capitalist accumulation. The neoliberal victory has reasserted the powers and position of the dominant classes. But this victory was not inevitable . No social settlement is permanent, and this one was fought for, from the coup in Chile and the defeat of the miners in Britain to current attacks on workers' rights and the benefits system. There is more than one way out of the current catastrophe. There is always an alternative.

Link

Neoliberalism is Heg/Heg is Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is Hegemonic Hall 2011
[Stuart, Hall is an emeritus professor at the Open University. Born in Jamaica and a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he was director of the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham until 1997. He was the first editor of New Left Review, and in 1995 was one of three founding editors of Soundings, Monday 12 September 2011, The March of the Neoliberals, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals] Can society be permanently reconstructed along these lines? Is neoliberalism hegemonic? The protests are growing. Weighty professional voices are ranged against structural reforms, and the speed and scale of cuts in a fragile economy. There are pauses, rethinks and U-turns. Finally, there are unexpected developments that come out of the blue, such as the phone-hacking scandal that enveloped Rupert Murdoch's News International. In the free-for-all ethos of neoliberal times, this sordid affair blew the media's cover, compromised the Cameron leadership and penetrated echelons of the state itself. As Donald Rumsfeld ruefully remarked, "Stuff Happens!" If the Lib-Dem wheeze of delivering cuts in government and campaigning against them at the next election fails to persuade, they face the prospect of an electoral wipeout. The coalition may fall apart, though at an election the Conservatives might get the majority they failed to muster last time. What happens next is not pregiven. Hegemony

is a tricky concept and provokes muddled thinking. No victories are permanent or final. Hegemony has constantly to be worked on, maintained, renewed, revised. Excluded social forces, whose consent has not been won, whose interests have not been taken into account, form the basis of counter-movements, resistance, alternative strategies and visions and the struggle over a hegemonic system starts anew. They constitute what Raymond Williams called "the emergent" and the reason why history is never closed but maintains an open horizon towards the future. However, in ambition, depth, degree of break with the past, variety of sites being colonised, impact on common sense, shift in the social architecture, neoliberalism does constitute a hegemonic project. Today, popular thinking and the systems of
calculation in daily life offer very little friction to the passage of its ideas. Delivery may be more difficult: new and old contradictions still haunt the edifice, in the very process of its reconstruction. Still, in terms of laying foundations and staging the future on favourable ground, the neoliberal project is several stages further on. To traduce a phrase of Marx's: "Well grubbed, old mole." Alas!

A2 Section

A2: We use the State

State based economics cant solve in Latin America-Empirics and Neoliberals Agree Veronica Ronchi 4/2/7
[Veronica Ronchi holds a degree in Contemporary History from University of Milan (2004) and a Master in Economic History and Political Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (2007). She is a research fellow at the Department of History and Historical Documentation at the University of Milan and Associate Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, The Neoliberal Myth in Latin America: The Cases of Mexico and Argentina in the 90s, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=983031]

In Latin America the early 70s marked the decline of the desarrollista approach, characterised by State interventionism as a model of development. The crisis of this strategy, that had led to high inflation levels , had elicited criticism from neoliberal analysts who believed it to be responsible for the economic and social situation of those years. The countries that suffered most from the crisis where those in the Cono Sur area (Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), whose GNP between 1945 and 1970 grew by only 3.5% compared to the 6.2% growth in the rest of the subcontinent. The particular economic, political and social situation of these countries, disrupted by revolutionary movements, encouraged the return of inflexible and repressive military dictatorships that enforced the economic and social policies inherent in neoliberal postulates and, in the opinion of Torcuato Di Tella, tailored to the interests of the national and international bourgeoisie. According to neoliberal principles, the poor development
of the region had to be attributed to State interventionism in the economy, which had characterised the previous policies. The disastrous effects of the crisis of the 30s in Latin

America showed that economic liberalism was unable to solve the severe historical problems of Latin American economies. The policies that could have been useful to deal with the crisis of the 30s
- which was attributed to a generalised fall in demand were destined to fail when transformed into development strategies, the neoliberals maintained, because in the long run the main negative characteristic of the underdeveloped countries was insufficient productivity rather than lack of demand. The strategy of development towards the internal market or import-substituting industrialisation (ISI model) was applied in order to deal with the crisis. This was the main strategy adopted in the area from the late 30s to the early 50s. It was followed by the desarrollista policy

promoted by the Comisin Econmica para la Amrica Latina -CEPAL that increased the States participation 6 in economic activity as incentive to achieve industrialisation and stop the exports of raw materials, typical of the area.11. While these economic policies succeeded in giving industrialisation a key role in economic growth in the 30s, they led to a decrease in the level of exports and, consequently, foreign currencies, and to the subsequent crisis of the balance of payments. An attempt to solve this problem was the increase of State control over the imports and capital movements. In order to fight inflation the State fixed the prices granting priority to indispensable consumer goods. At that time this strategy represented an attempt to meet the accumulation requirements within the social relations of capitalist production. Based on the analysis of previous development strategies, neoliberalists maintained that the States growing interventionism in the economy had substituted the market as the main mechanism for the redistribution of resources. This disincentive to private initiative had fostered capital accumulation through an expansive monetary policy causing high inflation levels. Moreover, because of its political involvement, the State was an inefficient entrepreneur and its participation had thus slowed down the subcontinents development .

State based economics cant solve in Latin America-Empirics and Neoliberals Agree Veronica Ronchi 4/2/7
[Veronica Ronchi holds a degree in Contemporary History from University of Milan (2004) and a Master in Economic History and Political Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (2007). She is a research fellow at the Department of History and Historical Documentation at the University of Milan and Associate Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, The Neoliberal Myth in Latin America: The Cases of Mexico and Argentina in the 90s, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=983031]

In Latin America the early 70s marked the decline of the desarrollista approach, characterised by State interventionism as a model of development. The crisis of this strategy, that had led to high inflation levels , had elicited criticism from neoliberal analysts who believed it to be responsible for the economic and social situation of those years. The countries that suffered most from the crisis where those in the Cono Sur area (Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), whose GNP between 1945 and 1970 grew by only 3.5% compared to the 6.2% growth in the rest of the subcontinent. The particular economic, political and social situation of these countries, disrupted by revolutionary movements, encouraged the return of inflexible and repressive military dictatorships that enforced the economic and social policies inherent in neoliberal postulates and, in the opinion of Torcuato Di Tella, tailored to the interests of the national and international bourgeoisie. According to neoliberal principles, the poor development
of the region had to be attributed to State interventionism in the economy, which had characterised the previous policies. The disastrous effects of the crisis of the 30s in Latin

America showed that economic liberalism was unable to solve the severe historical problems of Latin American economies. The policies that could have been useful to deal with the crisis of the 30s
- which was attributed to a generalised fall in demand were destined to fail when transformed into development strategies, the neoliberals maintained, because in the long run the main negative characteristic of the underdeveloped countries was insufficient productivity rather than lack of demand. The strategy of development towards the internal market or import-substituting industrialisation (ISI model) was applied in order to deal with the crisis. This was the main strategy adopted in the area from the late 30s to the early 50s. It was followed by the desarrollista policy

promoted by the Comisin Econmica para la Amrica Latina -CEPAL that increased the States participation 6 in economic activity as incentive to achieve industrialisation and stop the exports of raw materials, typical of the area.11. While these economic policies succeeded in giving industrialisation a key role in economic growth in the 30s, they led to a decrease in the level of exports and, consequently, foreign currencies, and to the subsequent crisis of the balance of payments. An attempt to solve this problem was the increase of State control over the imports and capital movements. In order to fight inflation the State fixed the prices granting priority to indispensable consumer goods. At that time this strategy represented an attempt to meet the accumulation requirements within the social relations of capitalist production. Based on the analysis of previous development strategies, neoliberalists maintained that the States growing interventionism in the economy had substituted the market as the main mechanism for the redistribution of resources. This disincentive to private initiative had fostered capital accumulation through an expansive monetary policy causing high inflation levels. Moreover, because of its political involvement, the State was an inefficient entrepreneur and its participation had thus slowed down the subcontinents development

A2: Neolib inevitable

Neoliberalism only survives because there is no alternative economic model in the squo. Its try or cry for the alt Pepe Escobar September 26, 2011
[Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and analyst for the Real News, Comeuppance of a Superpower: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Decline of the West, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/article/163638/comeuppance-superpower-neoliberal-capitalism-anddecline-west#axzz2aSZSxTTJ]

was civilized thanks to the unrelenting pressure of gritty working class movements and the ever-present threat of strikes and even revolutions . The existence of the Soviet bloc, an alternate model of economic development (however warped), also helped. To counteract the USSR, Washingtons and Europes ruling groups had to buy the support of their masses in defending what no one blushed about calling the Western way of life. A complex social contract was forged, and it involved capital making concessions. No more. Not in Washington, thats obvious. And increasingly, not in Europe either. That system started breaking down as soon astalk about total ideological triumph!neoliberalism became the only show in town. There was a single superhighway from there and it swept the most fragile strands of the middle class directly into a new post-industrial proletariat, or simply into unemployable status. If neoliberalism is the victor for now, its because no realist, alternative developmental model exists, and yet what it has won is ever more in question .
Meanwhile, except in the Middle East, progressives the world over are paralyzed, as if expecting the old order to dissolve by itself. Unfortunately, history teaches us that, at similar crossroads in the past, you are as likely to find the grapes of wrath, right-wing populist-style, as anything elseor worse yet, outright fascism. The West against the rest is a simplistic formula that doesnt begin to describe such a wor ld. Imagine instead, a planet in which the rest are trying to step beyond the West in a variety of ways, but also have absorbed that West in ways too deep to describe. Heres the irony, then: Yes, the West will decline, Washington included, and still it will leave itse lf behind everywhere.

Its worth remembering that capitalism

A2: Neolib is dead in Latin America/non-Uniqueness

Neoliberalism is alive in Latin America and is misrepresented by anti-neoliberal groups Stephen Johnson September 4, 2003
[Stephen Johnson is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation., Is Neoliberalism Dead In Latin America?, The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/09/is-neoliberalism-dead-in-latin-america]

Premature obituaries are nothing new. Even the great American writer Mark Twain read an erroneous account of his own death and was inspired to write "reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." And so it is with the popular supposition that neoliberalism has run its course in Latin America. Not only is it alive, but core aspects of it-political and economic freedomhave yet to be fully implemented . Unfortunately, "neoliberalism" is one of those catch-all terms that means different things to different people. To Marxists looking for a new cause, it means policies that enrich multinational corporations as they trample over the world's poor and the environment. To antiglobalists it is western expansionism. To economic fundamentalists it is the infallibility of the market. Since none of these definitions allows for nuance and nobody agrees on what is "neo" about the term , it may be better to examine the status of
liberalism in Latin America with its supporting pillars, democracy and economic freedom. After all, neoliberalism derives from the classic liberalism of 18th century moral philosophers who proposed that individuals should be free to do as they see fit and own and dispose of property as they wish with minimal state interference.

Alt Extensions
Neoliberalism has created a false illusion of progress-reject their internal links as they are grounded in a neoliberal mindset. The aff undermines those in poverty and cause democracy to become meaningless. Only a rejection of Neoliberal epistemology can cause real knowledge production and change in the round Kenneth E. Bauzon 2/13/08
* Ph.D. Professor of Political, Race, Poverty, and the Neoliberal Agenda in the United States: Lessons from Katrina and Rita, MR Zine, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/bauzon130208.html+ The gravity of the

problems attendant to contemporary neoliberal globalization may easily be brushed aside or ignored by those who tremendously profit from it. However, for the vast majority of people on the globe, especially large or increasing segments of the populations in countries whose economic stability has been undermined, the problems highlighted in this essay are but the tip of an iceberg, so to speak. The world has witnessed over the last two to three decades the widening income gaps between and within countries. These are documented by reports from credible agencies like those of the UN and even the WB. During the same period, the globe has also witnessed the deterioration of conditions in the workplace, the erosion of labor standards, the depression of workers' wages, and the rise in migrant labor. Threats to the natural environment as well as to the health of persons have grown bigger. The dangers of global warming, however, still do not appear to be real in the eyes of some leaders in the industrialized world despite overwhelming consensus among scientists. At the same time, the concerns over the health effects of genetically modified food products are being ignored and brushed aside. And, even though
much of the mammoth dam projects funded by the WB and the IMF have resulted in the disruption, destruction, or dislocation of villages, farms and cultural sites across the globe. Neoliberal

state institutions are clearly divorced from the real needs

and aspirations of ordinary citizens who raise their voices in indignation to -- and in desperation of -- the policies
these institutions adamantly uphold. This could not become more obvious -- as this essay has illustrated -- than in the southern region of the US victimized not so much by Mother Nature but, rather, by the bankrupt policies and attitudes that were operational prior to and following the visits of Katrina and Rita. Having actual stranglehold of governance institutions, most crucially at the federal level, the neoliberals have in practice sought to distinguish the uniqueness of their social position, on one hand, and that of grassroots citizens whom they pay lip service to, on the other. As alluded to earlier, the neoliberals have been deep in their secrecy in their decision-making style in contrast to the openness with which they have disregarded the public service functions of government.

They have favored their friends over the

welfare of the citizenry but have ironically used public resources to do so. This has logically and necessarily translated into political influence and power among the already powerful, on one hand, and greater vulnerability and desperation among the weak and the voiceless, on the other. The tendency
towards militarization of American society is a phenomenon yet to be recognized in the mainstream media, but it has been all too real to residents of New Orleans who have had to endure the indignity of being faced down by heavily armed mercenary thugs masquerading as security guards. It would

seem obvious, therefore, that any serious and candid discussion of accountability in government would do well to begin with a realization that democracy may simply be a rhetorical device and that the actions and policies associated with neoliberalism have all but coopted democracy and turned its meaning on its head . The lessons that Katrina and Rita brought in the wake of their visit should
include not merely a recognition of the necessity and the ability to deal with similar "acts of God" in the future but, more especially, the urgency of safeguarding the institutions of democracy and the resources of the people at the grassroots level for their own needs and wellbeing.

The Alternative is not an Abandonment of economics. It is a new path to potential benefits in developing countries Rodick 2002
[Dani, is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Sep. 27, After Neoliberalism, What?, Project Syndicate, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/after-neoliberalism--what-]

While economic analysis can help in making institutional choices, there is also a large role for public deliberation and collective choice. In fact, we can think of participatory democracy as a meta-institution that helps select among the "menu" of possible institutional arrangements in each area. Designing such a growth strategy is both harder and easier than implementing standard neoliberal policies. It is harder because the binding constraints on growth are usually country-specific and do not respond well to standardized recipes. But it is easier because once those constraints are appropriately targeted, relatively simple policy changes can yield enormous economic payoffs and start a virtuous cycle of growth and institutional reform. Adopting this approach does not mean abandoning mainstream economics --far from it. Neoliberalism is to neoclassical economics as astrology is to astronomy. In both cases, it takes a lot of blind faith to
go from one to the other. Critics of neoliberalism should not oppose mainstream economics--only its misuse.

Aff

No Impact
Neoliberalism wont spread in Latin America-Multiple Warrants
-Authoritarian governments -Corruption -Appealing to the poor -Reforms need to be implemented -Labor Laws -Centralized Economics Stephen

Johnson September 4, 2003

[Stephen Johnson is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation., Is Neoliberalism Dead In Latin America?, The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/09/is-neoliberalism-dead-in-latin-america]

While liberalism is not dead in Latin America, it is at risk of not succeeding as long as democracy and free markets are only partially adopted. And while authoritarian regimes seem to be reappearing with alarming frequency, it is also fair to say that caudillos and populism are dinosaurs in an age of international interdependence, expanding trade, and global markets. For

liberalism to flourish, democratic gains must go beyond elections to put authority in its proper place-at the service of all free individuals. Governments must be decentralized so that officials at local, district, and national levels handle only those matters that correspond to them and to their expertise. Executive branch leadership should be balanced by
equally strong legislatures and judiciaries. Representation in national assemblies should be direct and largely district specific. Primaries, not party leaders, should decide who runs in general elections. No law should exempt a politician from prosecution for a crime. And citizens should demand choices, not promises from their leaders and representatives. To

grow their economies and extend prosperity to the poor, countries must streamline their commercial codes to minimize state interference in commerce except to promote business creation and competition. Thanks to the efforts of Hernando de Soto and his
Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru established a system that reduced the time to license small businesses from 289 days to one. As a result, costs to business owners were cut from $1,200 to $174 and between 1991 and 1997 more than 500,000 new jobs were created. Valueadded taxes should be minimized in favor of low, simple, and fair personal and corporate income taxes. No one should make the mistake of complicating taxes like the United States. Finally, labor laws should be revised to eliminate demanding provisions that scare employers away from hiring the workers they need. Authoritarian states resemble

parents that never permit their children to leave home, while liberal societies expect citizens to grow up and pursue their own dreams. Authoritarian leaders still appeal to Latin America's majority poor, for whom forceful, charismatic personalities seem to offer the only hope of change. Liberalism's democracy and markets won't be viable alternatives until reforms to establish them are fully implemented. True prosperity is only possible when all Latin Americans enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities to earn a living, run for office, or start a business.

No-Link
No Link- Recession Killed American Neoliberal Influence and the Alternative is not feasible and has no timeframe Heather Stewart Sunday 21 February 2010
[Heather Stewart, Ph.D. is the Associate Vice President for Global Technology at New York University. In her current role she brokers partnerships within and on behalf of the university, The credit crunch has shattered America's 'neoliberal dream, The Gaurdian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/22/america-neoliberal-dream-imf] In the event, financial

liberalisation led not to safer but riskier markets, a message not lost on countries such as India, where Turner was speaking. The Indians refused to swallow the neo-liberal orthodoxy completely, keeping some control over the growth of credit, for example a decision that once made Delhi look woefully backward, but has helped India avoid the worst excesses of the financial boom and bust. After the most catastrophic crash for 80 years led to a shattering world recession, the ideology that transmitted American economic ideas across the globe has been comprehensively trashed , even in its spiritual homes of Washington and London. But the thinking about what will replace it has only just begun. China, India, Brazil and Russia have taken divergent paths to development. Cohen and DeLong -suggest a growing role for governments and regulation; Turner talks
about -controls on capital flows, and a transaction tax to throw "sand in the wheels" of the hyperactive financial markets; the IMF muses about new macroeconomic "tools". But

none of that amounts to a fully thought-through alternative, and that will

take time . We have no more idea of what the economic orthodoxy of the next half-century will look like than of what will supplant Coke, denim or hamburgers.