Yes, the neo-liberals have taken up the 200 year-old call to re-introduce serfdom: " ... everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.”

— Arthur Young, 1771

Sorry Marko, you missed the communist revolution by about a hundred years.

It's been, gone, & was a bloody catastrophe for most who experienced it. Certainly nothing to do with freedom.

Why on earth do we pay these dills from our taxes?

Why help the bludging leaners, when you can help the lifters, the over privileged and the already advantaged!

And continuing on the classical neoliberal theme, even as they become fewer and fewer and fatter and fatter.

Billionaire Warren Buffet, the Oracle from Omaha, reportedly noted with some shock, his $60,000.00 a year secretary paid more personal income tax (30%) than he did at (15%)!

He just didn't see why those on significantly lower means should pay more tax or the bulk of it.
And as such, a truly christian sentiment!

Too many are Sunday morning Christians, who then return to their occupations, that like the money grubbing used car salesman, selling over priced death trap rust buckets to kids, with more money than common sense?

Or pulpit pound pollies, that give the (look at me lord) Sunday morning sermon, then go back to jobs that create austerity for the masses, while further entrenching or expanding privileges for people who just haven't earned it or deserve either, but expect it as their entrenched birthright?

That said, there is no place in this discussion for anarchism, its goal!?
But rather patent pragmatism, and the masses using such power as they have to throw out the incumbent with every election; at least until patent fair-mindedness and even-handedness are the order of the day!

Simply put, nobody but nobody is served in any way, shape or form by austerity, which only ever serves to make things worse.

What works has already been trailed and proven in places like war torn and bankrupt post war Germany or Japan; and on the back of truly united endeavor; rather than the destructive divide and rule politics, that sets mate against mate or brother against brother.

As does the longed for revolution, which is invariably seen by those who inevitably advocate it; as their own road to personal power and prosperity.
Like the trust abusing pigs on George Orwell's animal farm! Da?
Rhrosty.

Like almost everything written about so-called neo-liberalism this article attacks a straw man. No-one believes the things Marko attributes to neo-liberalism. Hayek certainly didn’t.

The Road to Serfdom was published in 1944, not the late 1940s. Its backdrop was the twin tyrannies of fascism and Marxism. Hayek’s insight was that these two totalitarian ideologies were not polar opposites, as the proponents of both tended to assume, but held much in common - in particular the elevation of the supposed collective interest over the individual and the primacy of the State in ordering people’s lives. He was also concerned that increasing government direction of the economy and society in democracies could become a slippery slope towards totalitarianism.

Hayek and Keynes were a lot closer than many people realise. Keynes supported restrictions on the activities of the State, and Hayek accepted a role for government in supporting the living standards of the poor.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/03/keynes-and-hayek

Dear Marko,

I am no expert in these matters, but if what you describe is correct, than those whom you call "neoliberals" are not liberals at all!

Henry Giroux has been communicating the same message for years, but with far greater passion and intensity, via his various books and online essays.
Meanwhile of course it was the disciples of Hayek, via the Chicago boyz that gave much of the world a lesson in applied neo-psychotic politics as described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. The process thus described continues unabated.