In hindsight, the neoliberal cure was far worse than the New Deal liberal disease. The maturity of the New Deal's system of regulated managerial capitalism coincided with the post-World War II boom and the greatest expansion of the middle class in American history. Consumer advocates, however, blamed it for stifling diversity, libertarians and conservatives claimed it choked off economic progress, and political scientists denounced it for spawning "interest-group liberalism."
To the applause of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike, the New Deal system of regulation was dismantled in one sector of the economy after another in the late 1970s and 1980s. The result was not the flourishing diversity hoped for by liberal consumer activists nor the solid sustainable economic growth promised by free-market ideologues. Instead, the result was the collapse of unions, the decline of private R&D, three decades of wage stagnation, and an economy driven by financialization, speculation, and rising debt rather than by productive industry and rising wages. (From his new book, Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States, p. 391)
It has been a basic assumption of economists that growth is always good. Growth is good, but not any kind of growth to the exclusion of other kinds. Indiscriminate and economic growth is simply not sustainable in the long run. At some point we have to have a broad discussion about what whether the human energies that are so obsessed with economic growth might be redirected to other realms of human flourishing that might be more deeply satisfying and humanizing.
The mixed economy of the New Deal era was a closer approximation of what is needed than the neoliberal, anything-goes economy we have now.