http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102284658379985.html
What Galbraith could not have foreseen - ensconced in the New Deal consensus as he was - was that that the real ceiling on social spending would be set not merely by the Republicans but also, and perhaps more fatally, by the Democrats.
Once upon a time, Republicans were tax collectors for the welfare state. Now, Democrats are the austerians of reactionary Keynesianism.
[WS:] Excellent piece. However, what I would like to see is a look at the social forces that produced this shift. At this point, the piece leaves a lingering impression of simplistic Democrat bashing a la Cox. A far more informative approach would be to to look at the changes in the balance of class power in the US since the 1960s. My favored theme is the exponential growth of the technostructure - college educated professionals forming the cadres of Corporate America - and aligning themselves ideologically with the owners of capital rather than sellers of labor power (see my piece http://wsokol.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-after-neoliberalism.html ). I find it very disconcerting talking to these folks. There are very liberal on the outside (civil rights, peace, community, environment, yada yada yada) but they are businessmen at heart - infatuated with entrepreneurship, result being financially successful, running their own businesses focused on the "results," efficiency, technology. If memory serves, David Harvey made a similar observation in his book "A Brief History of Neoliberalism."
I am not denying the constant push in that direction from real elites - the 1% with 8-digit incomes - but this has been a constant in the US politics. To explain the political sea change that Robin describes we need to link it to a change, not a constant. And if you look what big social change took place shortly before that political change - during the 1960s - you will the exponential growth of college graduates, who might have been hippies in their college years but became the technostructure when they got married and had mortgages to pay. Without an ideological shift in this rapidly growing social class - from social welfare liberalism to entrepreneurial libertarianism - the 1% real elite would not be able to gain ideological and political hegemony it now holds.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."