Coconut Trees is New Ellijay TV's newest show, where we examine the past with a critical eye and try to get a better understanding for how we wound up facing a lot of the problems that have started coming to a boiling point over the last few years. The loss of unionized industrial work and the disappearance of the so-called "middle class", declining standards of living, diminishing quality of education from pre-k up to universities... we've been taught to see these trends as "just the way things are", when in actuality, all of this was set in motion by a plucky group of politicians, economists, and rich people 50 years ago. And in spite of this being the reality that dominates politics, we almost never talk about this neo-liberal plot or the consensus on keeping it going that's shared in both our major political parties.

So on the first episode of Coconut Trees, we're going to turn over some stones and look at the Second World War, the ways in which that war changed people's ideas about the government, and how neo-liberalism was developed to counter the successes of state-led economic development.