It’s fake, and it has proven itself to be fake.

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It’s the smooth-talking neoliberal economics of ‘Libertarians”, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and, yes, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and their successors.

Most adherents of neoclassical and neoliberal economics deflect any criticism as evidence that we’ve been infiltrated by ‘the creeping socialism affecting us all’: “Just look at all the welfare spending!” (So, instead of be able to ‘afford’ pensions or a universal income, we needed compulsory superannuation, Paul Keating? OK, so Treasury was also indoctrinated?)

We’ve been experiencing austerity for the poor, largesse for the 0.1% and a great deal of cynical carrot-offering to others to the effect that “You, too, can be super-wealthy like us!”

Hey, chaps, if it wasn’t for ‘all that welfare’ that has emerged under greed-is-good economics, people would be out after you in the streets with pitchforks! The socio-economic morass into which we’ve been descending is actually the result of your ‘can-do-capitalism’, Mr Morrison. In reality, it is about as ‘capitalist’ as happy clappers are genuine Christians.

How about a little nuance to our current situation, away from the rentier-serving nonsensical capitalist-communist bifurcation?

Since the outset of the 1970s we’ve been experiencing speculative rent-seeking, pure and simple. It’s neither capitalist nor communist, in fact, Evergrande and its likes confirms that China has also been infected by wealth-extracting rentierism: a system in which the wealth generated by workers is waylayed by the 0.1% and a pittance is redirected back to workers and the unemployed as a sop to their servility.

I admit, this is far from a popular analysis, but if we look at at wealth creation and extraction and the Trickle-Up Economics of rentierism, the data bears it out.

Why is Prosper Australia the only body in the world making this distinction? We won’t solve the worldwide political impasse without seeing this speculative rentierism as being parasitical and in favour of only the 0.1%. It’s neither capitalist nor socialist but banking and monopolies love it – and it’s they who are calling the shots!

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