Iraq Private Sector Falters; Rolls of Government Soar

Iraq Private Sector Falters; Rolls of Government Soar

Despite early attempts by the U.S. to turn Iraq into a neoliberal utopia, where government is a hollow instrument used merely to transfer wealth from the masses to corporations through taxes and subsidies, the abysmal failure of this model has led to a huge increase in government jobs, according to the New York Times.

The Times is also right to point out that the impetus behind this policy isn’t completely economic: one advantage of government-based jobs is that they don’t necessarily have an incentive to cut costs, which, in the case of private corporations, creates large swathes of unemployed who have historically been the largest economic bloc to join up with paramilitary brigades like al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The irony of course being that the so-called “free market” is perhaps the biggest instigator of insurgency in Iraq.