View of the Acropolis, Rudolf Müller, 1863. Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.Criticisms of neoliberalism are proliferating, not just within the political and academic left, but within mainstream public opinion as well. Everywhere, people are beginning to seriously doubt whether markets will be able to produce another extended period of sustained growth, or whether they will solve the world's current problems or merely exacerbate them. Liberal economists are pointing to the increasing inequality caused by 30 years of neoliberalism in the west.
This analysis of rising inequality has been built upon by other critics of neoliberalism who examine the social effects of this inequality, beginning with Pickett and Wilkinson's The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, a path-breaking and hugely popular book that has led to more important work in this area, with research focusing in on inequality's mental and even physical health effects.
Aside from inequality, other critics have focused on how neoliberalism is incapable of solving the problem of climate change. Naomi Klein has, for a long time, pointed to how climate change intensified with the deregulation of markets in the 1970s – for many people the beginning point of the rise of neoliberal hegemony in the west. Today there is an intensifying debate over the idea of 'natural capital', which some critics see as an absurd move by neoliberal policy makers to apply the logic of the market to a problem that has, as Klein argues, only made the problem worse in the first place.
