Synopsis

The epochal shift toward neoliberalism—a web of policies that reduced government’s footprint in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces—that began in the US and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. This book traces how the neoliberal order fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of prosperity. The order peaked after the USSR’s collapse but began to unravel in the mid-2000s. A sweeping re-interpretation of our era, this book illuminates how neoliberal ideology became so infused in daily life for so long and why it fell apart.