In addition, the New School writer notes, "At the policy level, Monetarism had its age of glory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Two policy moves that have been traced to Monetarism were the abandonment of interest rate targets and the adoption of money supply targets by many Central Banks in the late 1970s and, most infamously, the attempted disinflations via monetary policy around the same time in the United States and the United Kingdom. The largely disastrous results of these policy experiments did much to discredit strict Monetarist doctrine among economic policy-makers, but certain aspects of it most notably the natural rate hypothesis and the money supply-inflation link remain standard beliefs even today."
The aftermath of the powerful political, social, and economic alliances of the 1980s had left the monetary policy in shambles around the globe, especially after Reagan got away with bloating the U.S. federal budget significantly and Thatcher initially had to spend nearly a decade hollowing out much of her own economy in order to restart things by the start of the 1990s. In short, it appeared in many quarters that the later-developed, neo-classical schools of political economy had much more to say (than Friedman's monetarist school) about how economies work at the macro level and how they can be managed and manipulated for the best electoral results.
Meanwhile, as far as academic jobs and tenure in the Western World went along in the 1980s and 1990s, it was fairly impossible in countries, like Germany and the USA to obtain stable work as an economics professor if you questioned the hunky-dory dreams and predictions of neo-classical economics.
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//thought.htm#alternative
This doesn't mean that neo-Keynesians and others could not coexist in some circles, but they had to first learn the language of the neo-classicalists and fight back in the propaganda wars that had been waged against the neo-Marxists, the neo-Keynesian, and other alternative theorists.
Only in the last decade, have Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz reemerged as a balance to the international dominance of the Neo-classicals. [Interestingly, Asian economists and theorists are usually missing from global recognition although they and their state-partner economic planning mandarins have been quite successful over the past 4 to 5 decades.]
http://www.adamsmithesq.com/archives/2008/10/nobel_prize_in_economics2.html
RESULT FOR SOCIETY
The main result in society, especially the USA, has been a greater stratification of society than has occurred for 7 or more decades.
http://www.abbeyclock.com/cecil/index.html
W. Cecil Headrick has written extensively about the issues of social stratification. It is already extensive and facts are often different than the assumptions of generations, but the news--in general--has been bad for 5 decades now.
Ten Points on Social Status in America Today by William Cecil Headrick
1. Social stratification is relatively rigid. Your position in society tends to be determined by that of your ancestors. You learn your values, ambitions, drive, and determination to succeed, and set your goals from what you learn from your family members. Families make every effort to maintain their status and pass it on to their children. The ingredients of status are wealth, education, and manners (etiquette, refinement).
2. Everybody wants to rise, of course, but only those with exceptional drive are able to, usually through education and therefore productivity. This means that societies can facilitate mobility with the use of academic scholarships, education in the military and "free" schools (paid for with taxes). Property taxes and progressive income taxes also help to level the field. However, there are mechanisms in place to keep you in your place: " . . . the open road to status for all climbers, it has been shown that if an upstart threatens to crash into the hereditary upper class, "gangs up on him," and he relapses ignominiously "into his original [lowly] status." " [See Chapter 4, page 127.] While this quote described the Kwakiutl Indians, similar mechanisms also existed in American society [also see Chapter 4, pages 135 and 136 ("Secrecy . . . "), and the Summary on pages 155 and 156], that are still used extensively today.
3. There are strong ties between wealth and status. Money can make more money if wisely invested. The wealthy usually educate their children well, giving them the tools to be highly productive economically. As for the distribution of wealth, "Federal Reserve figures for 1989 found the wealthiest 1 percent of American households (with net worth of at least $2.3 million each) owning nearly 40 percent of the nation's wealth, and the top 20 percent of American households (worth $180,000 or more) own more than 80 percent." In 2001, "the top 1% of Americans now have more personal wealth than the bottom 92% combined!" (From The Future of Money, by Bernard Lietaer, Random House UK).
4. Those lacking wealth are unable to take advantage of opportunities. The American Dream (read Chapter 12) is available to those who are able to take advantage of the opportunities. Those with good education and strong motivation can rise but with difficulty if they start with little or no wealth. Those with good education, strong motivation, and some wealth can rise more easily and more quickly. The lower you start, the more difficult it is to rise, and the further you must rise to get anywhere. Better employment positions are often determined by social position as well as by qualifications: "Every vocation under our industrial organization yields an income; and only the propertied person is in a situation to seek out for himself the more lucrative positions "while the unpropertied person must be content with the inferior positions." [Page 5] However, inferior positions are evaporating as American companies, while telling us to "Buy American," choose not to "Hire American," as they export American manufacturing jobs to whichever country offers the cheapest labor. Many better jobs, such as positions for computer programmers, are also disappearing. All these jobs are replaced by lower-paying positions in the service sector. "Exploitation of human labor" is one of the mechanisms mentioned on page 156. "Workers at the 20th percentile of earners made $8.31 an hour at the end of last year [2002], according to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute. The median worker [50th percentile] . . . $13.36 an hour" (New York Times). This means that fifty percent of working Americans do not earn enough to support a family of four, particularly if they must pay 30+% of their incomes for shelter, so both parents must work. Was this supposed to be the American Dream?
5. Education and motivation are essential but not enough. If you lack wealth (and therefore live in a rented apartment in the wrong zip code: this is how employers know!) and lack connections (the employer does not know who you are), you will probably start at or near the bottom, even if you are well qualified (read: educated). Starting at the bottom means the rise will be steeper, slower and longer. Education places you at an advantage over others who are less qualified, if you are willing to use your education productively. "A 1979 Carnegie study found that a child's future to be largely determined by social status, not brains."
6. Most employers are looking for people with qualifications who are "hungry" and willing to work hard for less pay. Economic recessions can devastate careers, both for the employed who lose their jobs and for young people ready to begin their careers. Employers almost always ask: "Are you currently employed?" In other words, how desperate are you? Your unemployment puts the potential employer in a stronger bargaining-position, and you will have a much harder time getting the employer to take you seriously. As far as the employer is concerned, the unemployed has little or no status, little or no credibility, and little or no worth.
7. Loss of social status is often caused by the consequences of war [See Chapter 5, page 171] and by chronic illness and/or premature death of the breadwinner, more common before the development of antibiotics. High medical bills can also ruin families. Substance abuse by the breadwinner, such as alcoholism, can reduce productivity and result in social descent. Divorce, so common nowadays, can result in social descent because it can ruin families financially. Credit card debt can also ruin families financially. "The oppression of debt is found in lost farms, homes, and even personal liberty." [See Chapter 4, page 149, Soll und Haben. The poor borrow; the rich lend.] The "unpropertied" effectively work for their masters, the "propertied," as they surrender a portion of their income as rent for the apartment (or other property) they live in, for the cars they drive, and for the money they must borrow to make ends meet (to eat and pay the rent). Our culture wants us to live now and pay later.
8. The last three points address issues concerning how people acquire their social values. Many homes in America now have two working parents, struggling to pay the rent (or mortgage), the car payment, and the credit card bills. If both working parents are too tired to raise the children, then the school system, daycare and the television are expected to raise and entertain the next generation. Playing in the neighborhood with other kids has been replaced by video games that discourage social interaction. Society is alarmed when children grow up without the social values their parents inherited from their grandparents and great-grandparents.
9. Before the modern age of cars and planes, families usually lived near their relatives. The children grew up with their cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Children learned the social values from their relatives as well as from their parents. As the parents' jobs take them to distant locations, children lose touch with their relatives. Family values become less important.
10. Children learn social values from their religion. The Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others emphasize values and rules of conduct clearly in their religious teachings. The Bible, for example, teaches against greed and envy, borrowing and lending for profit (in other words, exploiting others in need). The Bible teaches humility, charity, and respect for others. The processes of social stratification are contrary to religious teachings. Six days of work and one day of rest have been replaced by 24-7. The dollar is king. School prayer has been abolished. Virtually everything American children experience in reality contradicts the religion of their parents and grandparents. If religion becomes increasingly irrelevant, what implications will this have for the future of our civilization?
Most Americans today are either immigrants or descended from immigrants. The objective of Cecil's thesis was to demonstrate that there has been little social mobility in American society. Higher-class immigrants remain higher class today. Lower-class immigrants remain lower class today, regardless of nationality, religion, or race, or when they immigrated. There are, of course, individual exceptions. Cecil also compared social stratification in various societies in history, looking for social mobility within them. He stated that immigrants brought their social structures with them.
http://www.abbeyclock.com/cecil/index.html
This last statement about the inability of even immigrants to rise above their incoming caste or class in American society tells me that something is wrong with the melting pot and the problem is partially due to bad economic-social engineering by focusing only on greed to the top.
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