Opinion: Anticipating the looming decline of neoliberalism’s influence

For almost 50 years, the world has gotten faster, richer, and — yes — fatter. The power behind all that (ahem) growth has been neoliberalism.

It’s not a political label or a personal slander. Instead, as author Rana Foroohar explains in her new book, Homecoming, neoliberalism is “an economic and political philosophy that capital, people, and goods should be able to cross borders freely in search of the most productive and profitable returns.”

“Politics,” writes Foroohar, an assistant editor of the Financial Times and a contributor to CNN, “takes place at the level of the nation-state. But economics has, for the last 40 years, been an increasingly global affair.”

And, she quickly adds, more and more of this global game plays by “rules… (that) have been dictated by a global technocratic class whose members have more in common with one another than the majority of the people in their own country.”