Counterrevolution : extravagance and austerity in public finance / Melinda Cooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cooper, Melinda, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Series:

Near futures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Economic policy--1971-1981.

United States.

Finance, Public--United States--History--20th century.

Finance, Public.

Neoliberalism--United States.

Neoliberalism.

Supply-side economics--United States.

Supply-side economics.

Physical Description:

564 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, New York : Zone Books, [2024]

Summary:

"This book seeks to explain the combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy in our times"-- Provided by publisher.

"A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy. At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. While, to this day, welfare states do penance for fiscal sins, a closer look at the period of neoliberal ascendancy reveals a deep paradox. For all their pledges to contain debt and stamp out inflation, fiscal and monetary authorities have persistently violated their own moral code to indulge the interests of financial asset holders. Though mere wage earners are condemned to grinding austerity, wealthy investors inhabit a parallel universe of extravagant possibility. Melinda Cooper reads the neoliberal turn in public finance as a counterrevolutionary project-a trauma response to the turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book focuses on the role of public choice theory and supply-side economics in driving this counterrevolution and orchestrating the distribution of extravagance and austerity. Neoliberal public finance has not only deepened the divide between rich and poor. It has also reshaped the organizational form of capitalism itself. Dynastic capitalism is back with a vengeance, reckless as in the gilded age but much more actively subsidized by the state.Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: is another politics of extravagance possible?"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : fiscal and monetary counterrevolution

Capital gains : supply-side economics and the return of dynastic capitalism

Wage losses : supply-side populism and the blue-collar producer

Infinite regress : Virginia school neoliberalism and the tax revolt

Constitutional austerity : Virginia school neoliberalism and the balanced budget amendment

Aborting America : the reproductive politics of the national debt

Conclusion : on fiscal and monetary revolution.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Cooper, Melinda. Counterrevolution

ISBN:

9781942130932

1942130937

OCLC:

1391095421