Austerity’s core claim that cuts lead to growth is dangerous nonsense

Evidence

The opportunity to get into more detail and flesh out the argument, the academic rationale, was still there. Both the reasons given for why we all have to be austere (we have spent too much, etc.) and the logics expounded for the supposed positive effects of austerity as a policy—that cuts lead to growth—are, as we shall see, by and large dangerous nonsense. Yet they remain the governing ideas of the moment. By the time the book is published this may no longer be the case, but in the meantime, these ideas will have wrought tremendous damage. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 15

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Austerity has never successfully reduced debt and instead causes instability, riots, and war — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 614; Austerity logic ignores that growth, not cuts, may resolve debt — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 53; Announced austerity cuts signaled lower growth and deflated markets instead of calming them. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 28 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity logic ignores that growth, not cuts, may resolve debt #corroborates (0.92) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 53
• Announced austerity cuts signaled lower growth and deflated markets instead of calming them. #contradicts (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 28
• Austerity kills investment by suppressing the aggregate income that justifies new capacity. #expands (0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 393
• Showing austerity failed does not require proving Keynesian alternatives right #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 996
• Austerity suppresses consumer demand by starving the population that sustains the economy #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 349