To give some idea of what was meant

To give some idea of what was meant by these innocuous-sounding phrases, “reforming” labor market policies meant decreasing minimum wages and ending other regulations that supposedly “distorted” free labor markets. “Reducing government spending” meant reducing antipoverty programs, among other things. Hence, a series of contradictions appears to pervade the political economy of the World Bank’s new policy regime; one in which paying workers less increases the poverty the bank claims to be ending, and reducing the interventionary power of the state out of a stronger political commitment to privatization means reducing public power in ending poverty (and so on).