Neoliberalism Essay

This essay argues that neoliberalism affected racial politics, political lobbying, and domestic and global economic issues by complicating the relationship between cultural and economic issues. Neoliberalism caused cultural and economic issues to become intertwined, and they since have not been able to be separated from each other. The effects of neoliberalism on American citizens and non-citizens are globalization, a power shift to corporations, and changes to welfare and other social programs. Constituents have been mobilized through a “rhetorical separation of the economic from the political and cultural” and through ignoring the “overarching salience of global neoliberalism” in both American political parties (Duggan, xiv). Neoliberal
Bill Clinton is a prime example of this. Bruce Miroff describes him as “a political actor who lacks a stable identity associated with ideological and partisan values and who is, thereby, free to move nimbly from one position to another as political fashion dictates” (Miroff, 488). Bill Clinton claims to offer a new vision of America, one that he describes as “not conservative or liberal … not even Republican or Democratic. It is different. It is new” (MP 13.1). Duggan tells us, however, that the entire American political spectrum is heavily influenced by neoliberalism, and this includes leaders like Clinton. Clinton’s new vision of America does not differ much from the two presidents who preceded him. After all, he is the president responsible for “ending welfare as we know it,” and his “new covenant” with America focuses heavily on “jobs,” “industries,” “entrepreneurs and businesspeople,” and “American wealth” (MP, 13.1, 13.4). Instead of upholding the “modern reconstruction of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal,” Clinton paid lip service to social liberalism while promoting neoliberal policies that actively worked against it (Miroff,