Neoliberalism for Teletubbies

In the first year of the last century, a terrible tornado swept through the American state of Kansas and carried 12-year-old Dorothy Gale into the Land of Oz. Wanting to go home, she set off for the Emerald City to see the great wizard. On the way, she was joined by a scarecrow without a brain, a tin woodsman without a heart, and a lion without courage. It turned out the Wizard of Oz was just a fraud, who—like many politicians after him—rose to power using little more than a megaphone and a hot air balloon. The help he offered Dorothy and her companions was equally hollow: the scarecrow got a head filled with pins and bran, the tin man got a sack of sawdust instead of a heart, and the lion received a secret potion for courage. What exactly was in that drink we’ll never know—but Slovenians know well what kind of drink gives you guts.

When the film version of The Wizard of Oz was made in 1939, starring Judy Garland, the filmmakers apparently thought that bran-for-brains, sawdust-for-a-heart, and headaches-for-courage didn’t make for a convincing transformation. So in the movie, the scarecrow got a diploma, the tin man a clock, and the lion a medal.

But in Kansas, people still value tradition and culture over rationality and the political correctness of Hollywood elites. A few years ago, a dentist in the small Kansas town of Iola gave a 13-year-old girl polystyrene fillings. Whether this decision came from graduating at the University of Oz Medical School or from having actual bran between his ears is unclear, but the media reported that the girl’s parents couldn’t afford to finish the dental procedure, and her health insurance barely covered the styrofoam. The fillings, of course, failed—and the girl lost her jaw.

Stories about people in the U.S. unable to afford even the most basic healthcare are sadly common—but Kansas stands out. The reason? The so-called Kansas Experiment of 2012, launched by Governor Sam Brownback, a man who apparently thinks with bran and feels with sawdust. His tax reform—unironically dubbed the “March to Zero”—slashed taxes for the wealthiest, drastically cut or eliminated profit taxes for most businesses and freelancers, reduced social benefits, made healthcare less accessible for the poorest (hence the styrofoam fillings), shut down dozens of schools, closed four public agencies, and laid off 2,000 public employees.

Governor Brownback promised this would be an adrenaline shot for the economy, bringing in investments and boosting employment. This is, of course, the trickle-down economy in action—the belief that tax cuts for the rich will eventually benefit everyone. Brownback implemented the reform with ruthless ideological purity, making no compromises.

Neoliberalism has been fashionable ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s discovered Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and fell in love with the idea that taxes and government interference lead to the loss of freedom. But few before Brownback tried to implement this doctrine in such an infantile, simplistic, and brutal way. The global neoliberal cheer squad watched Kansas’s experiment with giddy excitement, clapping their little fingers like Teletubbies watching a pancake machine.

But in the end, it collapsed. Within a few years, Brownback had turned a budget surplus into a billion-dollar deficit. The promised investment boom and job growth never materialized. Economic growth lagged far behind other U.S. states—except a few that tried their own Kansas-style race to the bottom. To patch the hole, Brownback and friends raided infrastructure funds, stopped repairing highways, and raised sales tax, which hit low-income people the hardest. In the end, the poorest paid more taxes than before the reform.

Neoliberalism, it turns out, is stronger than gravity: money never trickles down—it only flows upward.

Years of neoliberal abuse drove Kansas voters into such a fury with the ruling elites that, in the 2016 presidential election, they gave a convincing victory to Donald Trump. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then you don’t understand populism—where it comes from and how it works. Neoliberalism and populism exist in a symbiotic relationship: the former creates the conditions for the latter, which in return undermines the democratic institutions that could threaten neoliberal power.

The common enemy of both is liberal democracy—the opposite of populist, illiberal democracy. Liberal democracy is built on human and social rights, political freedoms, the rule of law, solidarity, and respect for human dignity. But such a democracy needs social justice to function. People who have everything and people who have nothing cannot coexist peacefully in the same democratic system. Yet social justice is anathema to neoliberalism, which is based on the absolute freedom of capital. And so the vicious cycle is complete.

One might assume that the dismal failure of the Kansas experiment would at least slow down the triumphant march of the neoliberal-populist axis. But anyone who thinks that way doesn’t understand populism, which doesn’t run on reason but on negative emotion and manipulation—on channeled frustration, turning the ignored and the humiliated, the styrofoam-filled and disenfranchised, into prisoners of their own prejudices, hatred, and fear. Without this manipulated projection of blame, there would be no Trump, no Brexit, no Salvini, no Orbán, and no local mini-Orbáns.

And here’s where the Teletubby comparison ends. When Tinky Winky and friends break the pancake machine, they just shrug, wave goodbye, and retreated into their holes. Neoliberals don’t do that. When Trump wanted to thank Kansas voters for their loyalty, he passed a federal tax reform that looked suspiciously like the Kansas disaster.

Because no good deed goes unrewarded, Sam Brownback was appointed U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. And the main architect of the failed reform, Stephen Moore—a man said to enjoy playing dress-up as an economist and babbling nonsense on TV—was just nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

“Stephen will do a damn good job,” Trump declared as he jetted off to his Florida golf court.

When neoliberals drive off a cliff, they don’t retreat into holes.

They send in golf balls.