Austerity-era sacrifice drops the trickle-down promise that sacrifice would benefit the poor

Evidence

The “shared sacrifice” discourse of neoliberalism’s austerity epoch differs sharply from that accompanying the “trickle-down” economics of the 1980s. The Reagan-Thatcher era promised that wealth generated by the giants would benefit the small; today’s sacrificial citizen receives no such promise. Economic ends are delinked from the general welfare of the population but, in addition, as citizens are integrated into these ends via governance, they may be sacrificed to its needs, vicissitudes, and contingencies in a nation, just as they are in a firm. Thus, a political rationality born in reaction to National Socialism (recall that the theories of F. A. Hayek and the Ordo School of neoliberalism were retorts to that formation) paradoxically comes to mirror select aspects of it. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 419

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that Hayekian/Ordoliberal thought born against Nazism mirrors select aspects of it resonates with the reader’s broader study of how economic rationality erodes democracy, and echoes Schmittian critiques of liberal depoliticization. — connects to: Austerity’s costs fall harder on the poor, making it politically unsustainable — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 42; Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 135; Austerity calls for sacrifice to the economy as an unreturned offering. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 426 (+2 more)
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone studying Hayek’s intellectual genealogy — the mirroring claim is provocative and specific.

Broader Connections

• Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135
• Austerity calls for sacrifice to the economy as an unreturned offering. #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 426
• Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 803