The Long View

Readers of a certain age will recall George H. W. Bush’s (i.e. George I, not his idiot boy, George II) characterization of Ronald Raygun’s proposed economic policies when they both were running for the Republicon presidential nomination in 1980: “voodoo economics.” Laurie Essig has a better metaphor for it: “zombie economics.”

Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Essig observes:

The neoliberal economic policies of our government, like [George] Romero’s zombies [in the movie Night of the Living Dead], continue to eat our brains when they should have been dead long ago. And the fact that no matter how clear it is that neoliberal economic policies should have been killed because they didn’t work and they brought the U.S. and the world to financial ruin, they just keep popping up, alive, ready to eat our brains. . .

But it’s 2011. Surely we should be able see neoliberal economic policies that give to the rich with the claim that it will help all of us as the monsters they are? But instead we stumble toward them, begging them to eat our brains, take our money, and make sure the super rich among us don’t pay taxes so they can continue shopping.