Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan implemented supply-side tax cuts, union busting, privatization, and deregulation, reversing postwar Keynesian consensus and elevating market mechanisms as primary allocators of social goods. This ideological shift justified austerity, inequality, and reduced public spending as necessary for economic efficiency and individual freedom. Neoliberalism redefined citizenship around consumer choice rather than collective entitlement.

British poets like Tony Harrison and Douglas Oliver documented deindustrialization's human costs in verses mourning closed factories and fractured communities abandoned by market logic. American Language poetry's formal experimentation mirrored neoliberal fragmentation of social solidarity into atomized individuals. Creative writing programs expanded as humanities departments sought marketable skills training aligned with vocational turn in higher education.