In 2009, the American government loaned almost half a billion dollars to Elon Musk’s Tesla corporation to hasten the development of electric car technology. What did it think it was playing at? Didn’t it remember what Ronald Reagan said? “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” the late president told a 1986 press conference.
For Reagan and the brains behind his neoliberal puppet, the role of government is to get out of the way and let the unfettered orgy of self-interested neoliberal economic life express itself as nature intended. Taxation is theft and interventionist industrial policy always a mistake, except when it involves bailing out failing banks in reward for tanking the economy.
