[He talked about some conservative governments being corrupt, to which I think:] Conservatism is a con anyway, selling austerity as a pain that the citizenry needs to suffer to get a "healthy economy", which means cutting budgets where somehow the solution is to outsource things (e.g. with the NHS), meaning the private companies owned by the elites rake in the money. And then they sell the "it's the immigrants who are overtaxing our resources" to get the public to vote for Brexit. (Where less EU regulations mean the elite will have more power to influence the government to allow worker exploitation)
Education and the health service (think buildings and land as assets for the latter) are the two remaining ones apart from something like the road system. I'm sure they will try these soon.
Didn't they already have a shot at education? That whole Academies mess. Although the master plan to make every school an "academy" [0] was shot down days after it was announced.
[0] This is a weird, UK government definition of the word. Don't think Plato.
In Norway it’s EU regulations that makes it easier for the conservatives (and the last 20-30 years the social democrats) to privatize the economy and exploit workers. EU is a neoliberal project with some benefits for the common man.
Mostly around trade, so that Norwegian products can be sold in the EU and vice versa without secondary inspections. Only 21% of EU laws apply to Norway, and I don’t see any evidence that the EU could do anything like force Norway to privatize things.
How did you come to that conclusion? My complain with EU was it's driven too much by social(ist) policies at least compared with the US? At least the money that goes into small agriculture is upsetting.
The EU is quite neoliberal. Austerity was the policy there after the recession. It has also presided over a massive financialization of the European economy. The US is far out of the political mainstream with other wealthy countries. In comparison to where they were 20 years ago (as opposed to where the US is now), Europe has shifted markedly right economically.
The subsidies of agriculture are kind of ludicrous, I agree.
If this article (referencing a 2008 paper) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/north-... is to be believed, the UK had the same thing, but the money went to tax cuts for the rich. So it does smell like corruption to me.
[He talked about some conservative governments being corrupt, to which I think:] Conservatism is a con anyway, selling austerity as a pain that the citizenry needs to suffer to get a "healthy economy", which means cutting budgets where somehow the solution is to outsource things (e.g. with the NHS), meaning the private companies owned by the elites rake in the money. And then they sell the "it's the immigrants who are overtaxing our resources" to get the public to vote for Brexit. (Where less EU regulations mean the elite will have more power to influence the government to allow worker exploitation)