It’s been an idotic policy for a hundred years. Austerity helped get the Nazis into power in Germany (helped out by who? Correct – the centrists). Isn’t there a famous saying about history returning as farce?
Labour just published a great austerity explainer video. So simple, so stupid.
I do believe austerity is a con. No one is THAT stupid. In the UK, austerity is the pretext for dismantling the welfare state, privatising the national health service, attacking the poor and disabled, and generally conducting class war on behalf of the 0.01%
Maybe I’m the only one living here in Portugal, but austerity isn’t over. The public services are way worse than they were while “austerity” was in. The so called “givebacks” amount to +€1 in retirement pensions and not much else. Taxes are still extremely high and they target the population indescriminately. So, everything is still bad, but the government propaganda is better.
was powerfully tempting to the world’s leaders, who saw in them a way to pull out of a recessionary spiral without limiting the number of yachts the oligarchs they depended on could afford.
No they didn’t at all. What they saw was justification to continue policies that reward the rich, period. Whether they pulled out of recession or not was immaterial. The economists provided them cover so they could claim the policies were intended to help the economy. If they had really cared about the economy, austerity would be off the table.
In fact, Republicans here knew very well that austerity would cripple our economy, which is why they wanted to foist it on Obama. Fortunately the Fed was smart enough to counter the federal government’s austerity with quantitative easing, which kept the economy in slow recovery mode for many years. Of course the Republicans screamed that it was going to cause hyperinflation. They were completely and absolutely wrong, about as wrong as you can possibly be with any prediction. Unfortunately their voters don’t care about their abysmal track record.
Taxes aren’t just what you pay annually, in the IRS. Everyday you pay taxes, be it IVA, gas taxes, etc. This taxes don’t discriminate and are included in everything: water, power, food.
If your definition of tax doesn’t include all of this, I advise you to take an Economics course. Then we can talk about propaganda.
