Yeah there is hardcore survivor’s bias.
Also the statement is at best only partially true for the older bougie and middle class fucks who lived through the 80s-90s as neoliberalism did it’s best to delegitimize socialism, and who dominate todays discourse about that period, due to wealth and survivor bias.
By design.
One of the purposes of the planned inefficiencies of state services, often the direct consequence of completely economically irrational private-public partnerships and offloading to private firms of public services who will bid for contracts to run state-constructed infastructure on the basis that they will minimize costs (inducing low wages, high turnover rates of workers and low efficiency, surprise suprise). The malignant genius of it is that the inefficiency of the effects of partial and shadow privatization of what should be public services turns people against them and pro privatization because they still perceive it as public.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the case of tax systems, especially the US tax system, or the US postal service.
Neoliberalism reestablishes profitability by sefl-destructive cost-cutting.
If you think this doesn’t exist then you haven’t spent enough time differentiating Marxism from liberal identity politics.