More news from the left-neoliberalism front!

Ezra Klein draws our attention to the fact that austerity isn’t the only thing the Euro-enforcers are trying to foist on Southern Europe. They’re also pushing an audacious agenda of “labor-market reform.” This is actually something I’ve been meaning to write about, so I’ll take a brief stab at it here.

The striking thing is, Klein seems really jazzed about this news. He touts an IMF paper brimming with recommendations for getting Europe on the right track: cut unemployment benefits and marginal tax rates, deregulate the service sector and crush unions and job security regulations (using the standard Europolicy dog-whistle “insiderism” — though to be fair, Klein seems to have misunderstood the term, thinking it refers to “the tendency to need to know someone to get a job”).