ABSTRACT
Economic reality has not been kind to the conservative rollback of the welfare state that began in the 1980s. When the Right came to power in the US, Britain, and elsewhere in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the liberal welfare state seemed to be in crisis everywhere. American conservatives confidently offered a new approach to economic policy—supply-side economics—with promises of lower taxes, smaller government, and economic prosperity that captured the public’s imagination and eclipsed the Left for more than a generation. The Right’s program of smaller government and greater prosperity has turned into the sour realities of financial instability, growing poverty, and deepening inequality that we have reviewed in previous chapters. The extravagant promises and dismal failures of conservative economic policy has turned the phrase “supply-side economics” into a sick joke for many who remember the now-embarrassing claim that the further enrichment of the richest among us would somehow “trickle down” the economic ladder to everyone else.
