How Neoliberal Policy Agenda Has Affected Justice - Essay Example

How Neoliberal Policy Agenda Has Affected Justice Abstract Traditionally, capitalism and close allies have been involved as elements that cause great social injustice. Reasons justifying such a notion are that human beings differ more considerable when it comes to aspects of social justice. A close feature of capitalism is Neoliberalism. Reflectively, neoliberalism grounds social injustice in how a country’s resources are managed. In this country, neoliberal has been blamed for causing subsequent human challenges. Finkel (2006) defines neo-liberalism as a belief that the marketplace is a primary institution for organizing and allocating resources and services among the population. Neo-liberalism experienced resurgence during President Mulroney era. As well, President Chetien accelerated the trend of neo-liberal making it workable than his predecessor. The incoming research will examine in depth the elements of neoliberal policy in Canada. The research will prove that the neoliberal policy has continued caused the increases in social injustices. The Justification To a greater extent neoliberal policy affected social justice in Canada. Canada like any other capitalists country suffered negative notions on neo-liberalism. For instance, the incidence of poverty led to the failure of society as opposed to the failures of individuals. Canadians were aware of the links between living in poverty and experiencing poor health. The framing of public attitudes towards poverty, and people living in poverty was considered in the context of increasing governmental commitments to the ideology of neo-liberalism. Firstly, marketers are the most efficient allocators of resources in production and distribution of resources. Competition is the primary market vehicle for innovations. In the public policy domains, related to health and social welfare that is including poverty related policy, neo-liberalism celebrates individual initiative rather than identifying and responding to collective needs. Convincingly, the government withdrawal from a range of policy areas such as housing provision, income security, and activity labor policy are close examples. As well, neo-liberalism played a decline of Canada welfare state. Neo-liberalism served as a justification for increased economic globalization and the concentration of wealth and power. With time, neoliberal policy agendas were transformed through intensive and conflicts interactions with inherited institutional landscape and power configurations. The following are reasons why explain why the introduction of the neoliberalism causes negative attributes to the economy Monopoly Power The political and economic union of the Confederation – era reflected the different cultural differences between the French and English Canada. Early trade relations between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples in North America could have been seen as having depended on the ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of the same. Subsequent emphasis on entrepreneurs was justified that racially monopolistic nature of Canadian capitalism. By that time, the governments were struggling with huge deficits, which questioned the interventionists’ strategy, which was formerly supported and joined with the business community to illuminate barriers to the rule of the marketplace. Rationale developed by these neoliberals exempted business monopolies practices that targeted the government as the perpetrator of liberalism. This meant that other business suffered greatly, hence depriving their stakeholders economic and thus, social freedom. Present day neoliberal strategy is based on pillars of liberalization, privations, deregulation and rollback of social services. Although the approach is widely recognized, it rollback social services and leads to attitudes of individualism and competition into public space on the assumptions that wealth generated by private initiatives and governments do nothing but spend. In simpler words, neoliberalism led to the formation of the state monopoly of capitalism, which consisted of the increase of state intervention to guarantee the survival of capital above all of the great monopolies and financial capital. The interests of the market economies, followed by monopolies, oligopolies, and transnational corporations dominate the economic life of the country. With time, neoliberal policy agendas transformed, through intensive and conflicting interactions with inherited institutions landscape and power configurations (Finke, 2006, p. 91). As the transformation was on-going, social interests were ignored given that the need for neoliberalism led to open-ended process with path dependent on strategies to adjust and reconstruct in response to endogenous. Burron (2012, p. 34) also contended that the introduced radical reform packages that promised to modernize institutions and foster social justice did not show concern for the market. Monopsony Power Similarly, privatization led to the expansion of monopsony power. As well, subsequent neoliberal forces to deregulate the sectors and weaken the monopsony power of governments, led to the buyer negotiating lower prices. Smith (2004) believes that Canadian cooperatives focus on economies in purchasing, warehousing, promotion, and distribution. Canadian corporations were large enough to have monopsony power, which was fanciful to suppose and not to be exercised. In locking out the society, the corporatives were organized by wholesalers that would provide strong leadership where the likelihood that the wholesaler would recognize and exercise monopsony power. The state of a capitalist society serves the interests of capital through the promotion of capital accumulation and preservations of existing order. Social Benefit Ignored Technically, the adoption of neoliberalism in Canada led to a culture of poverty, commonly referred to as a reason and adaptation of people who are unemployed or underemployed. Such a situation led to inadequate social benefits, marginalization from mainstream social institutions and government agencies. A culture of poverty became the way of life for the poor caught in the structural features of the market economy and the society. Those on the right twisted the concept, arguing that a subculture of poverty with dysfunctional work values and family structures that are created and being perpetuated by welfare programs and themselves. In Canada, social policies fail to address social problems since right-leaning critics fail to specify the appropriate strategy to encourage people’s health. The right to contend social programs costs impacted negatively on unfair taxpayers, creating disincentives for investments and programs that encouraged people to work with structured ways of government intrusion. However, MacDonald (2011, p. 258) factors that conservatives rejected many aspects of the welfare state, universal programs such as education and health care. As well, social insurance programs such as public pensions and employment insurance changed. These kinds of social programs with time reduced the choices of individuals while simultaneously requiring massive tax burdens that undermined the economy vitality. As well, inefficiency of capitalism became a central flaw of the Canadian welfare state. Incomes were taken from the public coffers to support people whose means were less than their own (Milz, 2010, p. 262). To some Canadians, poverty line contributed to the support of more fortune citizens. Hence, the universality of the law was collective. The general system included the poor transferring a part of their contribution to the support the more wealthy citizens and universality of income programs, which were financed by general taxation and resulted in the poor transferring some of their income through the tax system to the rich. Hence, many social services were considered ineffective since the government was under conditions of monopoly in such a way that there was no efficiency-inducing competition for the production of the service. In response to neoliberal policy, one would conclude that, prescriptions provided by the Canadian government during the period of major reform of the welfare state consisted an economic, social, cultural and fiscal reform. As a result, MacPhail and Bowles (2008, p. 548) believes that social well-being can be deregulated through markets in which individuals would compete for incomes, jobs, and social status. As a result, collective interests were undermined by the idea of competition as healthy and desirable. The market sectors expands in a number of ways, for instance, introducing user charges for social services that terminates public policies, for example, rent controls and allow private-sector firms to enter the education field by contracting out services. Convincingly, social policies need to be coordinated with or even subordinated to industrial, trade policy and economic trade. Wealth inequality Given that neo-liberal policies focus on supply-side economics, Canada fails to reduce the role of the state, which through privation in critical government initiatives. Briefly, the policy orientations led to the restructuring of international monetary Fund (IMF) where the world Bank structural adjustment and stabilization policies that were applied to developing and some OECD countries in the countries in the 1980s, and the 1990s. Justifiably, neo-liberalism leads to reduced standards of living for those already economically and socially vulnerable. In fact, the deregulation of markets and labor regulations exerts downwards pressure on wages. Reflectively, in Canada neo-liberal policies altered the price of labor power. The Canadian shift of neo-liberal-styled macroeconomic policies at the federal and provincial levels led to the change at which the state sees itself in relation to capital. Concisely, the aims to pursue more traditionally liberal avenues in fiscal and economic policy decreased taxation and regulation on industry (Janet). The amount and extent of continental and international trade deregulate the labor market force hence reducing social spending. For that reason, the liberal avenues produce the stark of conflicts between standards of living and capital accumulation. A close feature of the Canadian shift to neo-liberalism is the change in the nature of paid work, where both sexes were equally affected. However, Brown (2006, p. 691) believes that state policies shapes the daily and intergenerational reproduction of people, social spending as well as design social policies with the capacity to alleviate precariousness of households and the labor market. In the Canadian environment, social policy has been considered dramatic given that attempts to move towards a more residual model of social service provision is hindered by a subsequent need for liberalism. Inequality creates social division During a period of neoliberal policy reforms, Canada continued facing lower levels of income inequality, particularly among working –age adults than other countries. As a result, there was a universality underpinning key areas of Canadian policy, health and education buffered the effects of income inequality in Canada when it role. The richer were more insured than the middle class or the poor. This can be explained by the source of resilience that inhibited societal reserve capacity and a set of institutions capabilities established more or less insurance. Justifiably, the individual-level economic and social resource with community-level stressors led to high levels of residential segregation. Reflectively, dynamically related societal mechanism led to greater social cohesion, lower overall inequality, and more societal buffers against the effects of income inequality in the form of national policies. Blad (2011, p. 44) further asserts that this played a crucial role in moderating adverse effects of neo-liberalism on population health and development outcomes in Canada. Diminishing marginal utility of wealth The concept means that the rich get more satisfied as they become wealthier. With time, the government has continued advocating progressive taxation on efficiency. By allowing resources to flow to their highest return, equity could lead to the distribution of the tax burden, simplicity and incentives for political responsibility (James and Mark). The normative dimensions allude to the certainty, convenience and fairness with a criterion set forth. Diminishing the marginal utility of income affects the similarity of individuals’ utility function as much as the same way that a person derives the welfare from the resource. Pensively, neoliberalism policy agenda concerns social justice since the total support for productivity are heavily bolstered by a form of economic organization, which distributes resources unequally and the productivity gains that contributes significantly to the increase in total welfare. Thus, despite its concern to factors in the welfare of all persons, the criterion of utility maximization is not sufficiently sensitive to the importance of ensuring that every person be secured a reasonable level of protection. Since the best way to treat people as equal in a distributive scheme is to distribute resources that the level of protection enjoyed is equalized, hence neoliberal policies have hidden the importance of each person’s life. As such, the sensitivity of this approach to the welfare deficits faces by some individuals makes it seem initial an attractive way of eliminating mandatory demerits. A principal flaw is the insensitivity to considerations of the individual responsibility affecting entitlements to resources. As such, there is a need to cultivate for the welfare required. Hence, the degree to which individuals are responsible for their choices is controversial and, even when their responsibility is acknowledged. Boom and Bust cycle In the last few decades, disparities in market incomes in Canada have increased. Canada tax’s system has been an extensive system of transfer payments, which has significantly lessened the increase in the income gap. For that reason, boom and bust cycles are the third feature of market economies that most people have continued considering unacceptable. Closely, the system is subject to failure since it does not allow a collective decision-making room. The worst issue in the Canadian situation is that there is a challenging Keynes Problem, which is perhaps the most troubling of the boom-bust cycles that have been accentuated by globalization causing further integration. Kok (2012, p. 44) summarizes that the more integrated the Canadian economy is, the more it is impossible to engage logistical investments, the harder it becomes to reduce a polarizing neoliberal environment. Conclusion Reflectively, the Neoliberal policy has continued causing greater human suffering widely. As noted, the relevant policies have been primarily responsible for expanding the spiral injustices. The research has presented subsequent justifications that prove that Neoliberal policies have increased income inequalities, created monopoly and monopsony powers. In summary, Canada should engage policies that seek to minimize the adverse effect of neoliberal policies. Given that the country cannot abruptly move away from capitalism, it is advisable to employ strategies that reduce the harsh impacts of the policy on Canadians References Adam Curtis, producer, BBC documentary, The Power of Nightmares Blad, C. (2011). Neoliberalism and national culture state-building and legitimacy in Canada and Quebec. Leiden: BRILL. Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservativism and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34(6), 690–714. Burron, N. (2012). The New Democracy Wars the Politics of North American Democracy Promotion in the Americas. Farnham: Ashgate Pub. Finkel, A. (2006). Social policy and practice in Canada a history. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. James, N., and Mark, A. (n.d) “Introduction: Toward an Analytic of Governmental Experiments in These Times; Homeland Security as the New Social Security” Janet, C., (n.d). “Citizenship in a Time of Empire: The World Social Forum as a New Public Space” Kok, T. (2012). 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