The Austerity Myth 0
In the Guardian, Ha-Joon Chang muses on why it is so strong (emphasis added):
So, if the whole history of capitalism, and not just the experiences of the last few years, shows that the supposed remedies for today’s economic crisis are not going to work, what are our political and economic leaders doing? Perhaps they are insane – if we follow Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. But the more likely explanation is that, by pushing these policies against all evidence, our leaders are really telling us that they want to preserve – or even intensify, in areas like welfare policy – the economic system that has served them so well in the past three decades.
It is notable that the one thing the “haves” by and large are not suggesting is that they make a bigger contribution to the “have nots.”
Austerity clearly is good for others, not for themselves.
Read the rest.