Have you ever played that game where everyone tries to keep a balloon in the air as long as possible?

Lots of people are discussing the lack of a political agenda in neoliberalism’s policies based on this post by Doug Henwood: Crooked Timber (I, II), Will Wilkinson, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, The American Scene, Jacobin (I, II), Arin Dube, Brad Delong, JW Mason/Pitkin with good comments (I, II), Corey Robin, Elias IsQuith at LoEG, and I’m sure a ton more.

Most of the posts examine the lack of a unified theory of politics in neoliberalism’s current policy focus. I want to focus on a critique of neoliberalism’s higher-level policy agenda from a liberal point of view. I’m not much of a politics thinker, so I’ll leave it to others to tease out the…