Melinda Cooper, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, writing in Dissent: “The administration is attempting to incapacitate the redistributive and social protective arms of the state while exploiting its vast bureaucratic powers to silence, threaten, and deport…. The late Keynesian social state, with all its contradictions, has been replaced by the neoliberal antisocial state—a state that has downsized its redistributive functions, converted much of its welfare arm into punitive and carceral functions, privatized or outsourced as many of its services as possible, and multiplied its guarantees to private operators. This state form abandons the low- and non-waged to self-care yet still includes them within its nets as permanent debtors and generators of income such as toll fees, rents, utility bills, and interest on student debt. In its most inclusive “third way” form, the neoliberal state creates “social markets” as a substitute for social insurance: that is, instead of underwriting and equalizing the risks borne by everyday citizens, it incentivizes private insurers or asset managers to operate these services at a profit. This impoverished social policy model informed Obama’s Affordable Care Act or Biden’s infrastructure and energy legislation (although we should not forget the genuinely progressive elements of both agendas). Private health insurers and mega mutual fund managers such as BlackRock were the natural allies of this form of neoliberal capitalism.” Read more here.