[URSpider94]

As a general rule, I'd be very cautious before assuming that a columnist for The Economist doesn't understand what he is talking about. You may disagree with his conclusions, but that's a different matter.

What I believe he's talking about is the introduction of free market dynamics to schools and single-payer health care, two institutions that have been resolutely socialist (in the classical sense of the word) for a long, long time. His belief is that these "modernizations" are destroying the institutions.

[elgabogringo]

The author of the editorial is from the guardian, not the Economist.

The individual using the NHS/Schools as examples was the IMF author, not the editorial writer.

I never said either didn't understand economics. I said he didn't understand some of the words he was using. I was referring to the use of "neoliberalism" & "laissez faire"

[dragonwriter]

> The author of the editorial is from the guardian, not the Economist.

True.

> The individual using the NHS/Schools as examples was the IMF author, not the editorial writer.

False. The NHS/Schools example comes (as is explicitly stated in the Guardian piece) from Will Davies, author of The Limits of Neoliberalism, a completely separate work from the IMF report.