>That is they support evidence based economic policy tempered with progressive policy where the market does not not produce a fair or desirable outcome.
This is a state of affairs I would be willing to support. To describe modern day neoliberalism in these terms is to fall somewhere, depending on how charitable I am feeling, between propaganda and delusion.
"Evidence based economic policy" is complete bullshit. The consensus among academic economists on modern day economic policy is damning, but we see a tiny minority of Austrian school economists and members of the Chicago School of Economics being rolled out to clothe a slate of incredibly socially destructive policies in a costume of scientific respectability, because these individuals dogmatically promote policies that the wealthy elite want to see implemented, and damn the facts if they do not fit.
Progressive policy in the modern day is nonexistent, it has been burned to the ground. Democrat or Republican, the government is in the business of lowering taxes on the rich while slashing social services for the poor. "It is a basic tenet of conservatism that the poor will only work harder if they are given less money and the rich will only work harder if they are given more money". Racism and fear of the other has been deployed to devastating effect as a cover to dismantle the welfare state and the postwar social mechanisms that were intended to provide equal opportunities to citizens from all backgrounds.
Neoliberalism has become a dirty word because it is morally and scientifically bankrupt. It decries the basic foundations of an equitable society that had been in place for decades as far-left extremism while adopting a radically economically right-wing fetishization of market forces as a cure for all social ills. It is "intensely relaxed" about the concentration of wealth among the wealthy while living standards and economic security are eroded. It turns a blind eye to lawbreaking by corporations and wealthy individuals while intruding into private individuals' communications, use of recreational substances, and reproductive rights, undermining democracy and the rule of law in the process. And of course there's all the death and destruction wrought by endless intervention and warmongering in the middle east. I could go on...