Today's Must-Read

Now that the pain is over (for most of us), a very interesting article from Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo:

The following is another instance of the difference between neo-liberal governance and FDR-liberal governance. At present, tax filing — filling out and sending in a prepared multi-page tax return — is complicated and in most cases requires third-party software to complete. The government could do this for you, by filling in your forms with the information they have already, making those forms available online at a secure government web site and letting you add the rest of the data yourself.

But under our current neo-liberal government, the IRS doesn't do that. Instead, the IRS has agreements with vendors in the software industry, including the TurboTax giant Intuit, not to cut into their profit by "competing" with them in "providing free, on-line tax return preparation and filing services to taxpayers." Even though, as you'll see below, the IRS is compelled by law to do just that.

(Of course I was talking about taxes -- I mean, what's the worst thing that happens in this country in mid-April? Give or take a late-season blizzard.)

It's lengthy, but read the whole post. I found the differentiation between "FDR-liberal" and "neo-liberal" very interesting. Needless to say, as an amateur anthropologist, I'm in the FDR-liberal camp.*

And on that score, see also this from Mahablog:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the quintessential American centrist neoliberals. American centrist neoliberaism isn’t as far Right as the European neoliberalism George Monbiot complains about. Call it soft neoliberalism. But it’s still neoliberalism, and it still feeds into income inequality.

There are a lot of different definitions of neoliberalism, but ultimately it’s about sacrificing the standard of living of working-class men and women for the sake of global corporate profits.

The article is mostly about Hillary Clinton and her history, but it's all really about her neo-liberalism.

* I should probably explain that: Government is simply the institutionalization of our less formal (but no less real) social organizations, something that we've inherited from millions of years' worth of our simian and anthropoid ancestors. Government, then, functions as "the group," or in some cases, the alpha male, keeping things orderly and functioning smoothly. The basic purpose, and the whole reason sociality has an adaptive value, is that it serves to ensure the welfare of the group. When one component becomes too powerful and/or forgets the basic purpose of society -- today, it's multi-national corporations, in the 18th Century is was the aristocracy -- you have a disaster in the making. Sadly, the correction, if things get too far out of hand, is usually violent and destructive.

Anyway, that's why I'm an FDR-liberal.