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June 25, 2003
Under neo-liberalism the economy is a machine independent of social purpose.
Nugget Coombs said that.
With the shift to a neo-liberal mode of governance the market becomes the main instrument of governing the population ---co-ordinating the affairs of the nation. That has been the purpose of the economic reforms of the last two decades.
In this world it is held that a little more unemployment, a little less education, a little more market discipline and a little less freedom of expression would make the world a better place. It would be good for all Australians.
Well, GDP may have risen and the economy may be booming but I'm unhappy.
What I have experienced is that my economic security as a middle class person has been kicked away. I experience this new world in which the market is in charge of my future with a mixture of loss and anger. I experience my income as falling; I sense that I have been hung and drawn; that my life has been hollowed out. It has been a long slow downward slide in income relative to prices.
I don't like the steady squeeze on my income and the general decline in the quality of my life. I will grimly hang onto the past as I struggle with my life.
Nor do I want the markets to neutralize my social memory that things were different once. Nor do I want my values, motivations and judgements to be spliced into market ones as the market reshapes our culture and pulls us ever more into the structure of the new capitalism.
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