It's not neo. It's liberalism. And it's a good thing, although the world is not dominated by it. Unfortunately.
On a macro-economic level liberalism is flawed in so many aspects, it is astonishing that shit hasn't hit the fan way earlier in countries like Germany (where I live)
You need some other entity which can operate at a loss (by design) to provide these services. And that means taxes are needed.
A private for profit organizatin would traditionally try to keep costs down, operate services only on attractive routes (population center to population center) and try to turn a profit by charging for the tickets and potentially some travel amenities. Every overall benefit the rail company creates, whether that be employment, reduced car travel, increases in property prices in well-connected areas, don't benefit the company.
The government on the other hand can consider profit differently. The governments goals may be increasing increasing employment, reducing safety risks, and developing a given structurally weak region. Since the "profit" the operating government expects differs from that one of a private entity, the rail lines a government can operate while still "profiting" (in terms of developing towards their goals) are vastly different. But it doesn't have to be a loss strictly speaking
I firmly believe that a well ran and reasonably strong government, government market participation (i.e. in terms of providing infrastructure) and market intervention (i.e. antitrust legislation and intervention) leads to a net benefit for the vast majority of people in a given economy.
Also, especially in terms of something as fundamental fiscal & monetary policy many neoliberal discussions, for example those focussing around government debt, are demonstrably false.
For economies that enjoy a large degree of autonomy, schools of thought like the modern monetary theory serve as much better frameworks to explain macroeconomics and are substantially more suitable to build a progressive economy.
Nobody, including MMT, claims you shouldn't keep the national debt levels under control. But the reasons why you do it, to which extent you do it, and by which means you achieve that are vastly different.
Take taxation as an example. Simplified, Neoliberal = taxes bad. MMT considers taxation to be an instrument to control demand and inflation (by proxy).
Not so: the two points of view boil down to the exact same thing logically, even though MMT proponents sometimes fail to highlight this. Again, see FTPL which precisely explains the logical consequences of what you referenced above ("taxation [as] an instrument to control demand and inflation") without abandoning the neo-liberal framework.
Simplified, the fiscal stance (taxation + government spending) is indeed one factor in demand and inflation but the central bank "moves last" in that game, so we are free to let other considerations determine the best mix of taxation and spending. It's only when monetary intervention is ineffective that less conventional policies may be needed, for some reason or other. (Deep deflation, or hyperinflation would be examples of this.)
I mean oversimplifying is something we can do confidently after a set of ideas has lived up to the standards we expect from a macroeconomic framework.
One big problem with MMT is that it’s been basically whatever Stephanie Kelton et al. says it is each time they hop on a podcast and argue for some policy positions.
For a while it was hey spending more won’t cause inflation.
It sounds like you’re saying now it’s hey taxation is how we control inflation?
So with MMT it’s historically been difficult to make definite statements about anything and seems more a tool to argue for policy.
Among other things. A (if not the) fundamental idea of MMT is that for a government that issues its own currency, money is *not* a limited resource. The wealth the private sector accumulates is what the government (or rather, its central bank) issued in the first place. Taxes are not there to finance the government and its spending, they're there to establish the government issued currency as a valid form of payment.
This is a stark contrast to today, where "the taxpayer pays for the government".
Pretty much everything else builds upon this fundamental idea.
> For a while it was hey spending more won’t cause inflation.
This isn't universally true or false, it's also very much compatible with the idea of MMT.
Fundamentally, as introduced, money is considered to not be a limited resource. The restrictions placed on how much debt a government can take on etc. are arbitrary and of political nature.
There are, however, very real restrictions that aren't artificial in nature. Human labor as well as the availability of natural resources are the two example that would effectively constrain everything.
Regardless of how much money you throw at a given industry, when they cannot fulfil the demand because they don't have the human labor to produce the stuff in demand, prices will go up (=inflation). The same principle applies for natural resources, but in two ways. For one, if your production capacity has reached its natural limited (i.e. there is no more stuff), prices would go up if you continue throwing money at the problem. You're also constrained if you'd have to import resources. The Eurozone can create euros, but if you have to pay for Oil in USD they won't matter much.
That is also where the restrictions for MMT in terms of applicability come from. The state needs a large degree of monetary autonomy and the currency is not bound to a physical object (gold standard, etc). Also, as already implied, if you'd have to take on debt in a currency that you do not issue yourself, MMT won't really be applicable either.
"Neoliberalism" embodies an academic mindset, where a group of academics imagines an opposing group of academics, which has opposing views but is otherwise structured the same, around ideas, books, conferences and so forth, but ignores the ordinary voter as an explanation for "neoliberal" policies.
You do know that FDR's preferred economic system was overtly inspired by European fascism, right? You're literally saying that a fascist, authoritarian state and a wartime economy are the best we could possibly do. Excuse me but I'm a bit skeptical.
Luckily we have HN crypto-bros telling those academics they did't get their terminology right.
It's a mess, and always has been. I'm having a hard time taking any of this seriously anymore for a while now.
Edit/p.s.
I suppose we can conclude that what defines "neoliberalism" is that it is not well liked by those who like to use the term, everything else about it seems to be in perpetual flux.
it's not some meme term invented last year on tiktok that we're fine to be ignorant about.
The situation might be better if the socialist propagandists had been as keen on explaining the concept as they have clearly been on maligning the term. Which is kind of informative in itself, as it was meant to be a compromise solution between laissez faire and socialism, which led to some more principled classical liberals to distance themselves from the idea.
It's also kinda ironic to call out references to terminology while using "crypto-bro" in such a meaningless way.