Melinda Cooper is an Australian sociologist and political theorist. Her book Family Values (2017) argued that family is central to neoliberal policies such as free market and cuts in public spending: the neoliberal project shifted responsibility for deficit spending from the state to the household, vic American poverty laws. The importance the family as responsible for this structural role facilitated the alliance between seemingly incompatible neoliberal and neoconservative political actors. Counterrevolution (2024) investigates the current combination of austerity and extravagance underpinning government spending policy. She argues that as "asset management" has replaced commodity production as wealth measure, the US returns to dynastic class politics into class politics led by ruling families like the Kochs, Waltons, and the Trumps.