COMMENT
AUCKLAND: Bidenomics sounds good.
The word, I mean. The jury is still out on the policies.
The word has a ring to it that has not sounded so catchy since the days of Reaganomics.
We do not know much about Bidenomics yet but we know it will not be that.
Reaganomics, Thatcherism and, locally, Rogernomics came to define the neoliberal era.
A core belief was that government was best when it was small and it kept out of the way of businesses and individuals who were best placed to make rational economic decisions.
Now, whether we like it or not, big government is back.
Thanks to the pandemic, borrow and spend are no longer dirty words.
To be fair, there was already a cyclical shift under way which has seen even rightwing parties rejecting globalism in favour of a more handson nationalistic approach.
But the pandemic was a crisis that demanded strong state intervention and so it has effectively sealed the deal.
I’m a fan of globalisation. I think it has driven huge lifts in living standards throughout the world in the past 40 years.
I also cling to the liberal ideal that we’re global citizens first and national borders are largely arbitrary constructs.
But there’s no doubt it is out of fashion.
Too many people felt disenfranchised by the outsourcing of labour and displacement of local products.
Not enough was done, through years of strong economic growth, to address widening social inequalities.
Covid19 is accelerating the change — just as it has done with technology and workplace trends.
But growing social inequality and climate change are also seen to require some more direct intervention to shift the course we’re on.
Massive government stimulus is providing the credit and cash flow to keep economies moving.
As a child of the ’80s, I remain wary of debt, inflation and government excess.
There doesn’t seem to be signs of anything too radical in the Biden camp.