>>1863625During the world wars, the US government sold war bonds to the public and used the money to pay private companies to produce weapons and military supplies. In previous decades, the government used eminent domain to expropriate land and give it directly to private railroad owners to extend their tracks. Public-private partnerships and using the state to create markets or subsidize profits is nothing new, and has been done my bourgeois governments for over a century and a half.
The difference between then and now was that in the past profit rates were higher and extensive industrial development was ongoing, which justified high taxes and funding public goods and services to create a healthy industrial workforce. This dropped off in the 1970s/80s, and the response was to cut these public goods and services and smash organized labor, while keeping intact or expanding support and subsidies for businesses.
Pop-leftists insist on 'neoliberalism' as an ideological movement that was imposed by a nefarious libertarian cabal - meaning it can be willed away by political reform regardless of economic conditions. They refuse to consider that 'neoliberalism' was a rational and necessary survival response for global capitalism, in the absence of a viable communist alternative.