Austerity has never successfully reduced debt and instead causes instability, riots, and war

Evidence

This book has examined the case for austerity as both a sensible economic policy and as a coherent set of economic ideas, and it has found austerity to be lacking in both respects. Austerity doesn’t work. Period. Insofar as the fossil record contains a few cases of what look like “expansionary fiscal consolidations,” as we saw in chapter 6, these cases are either driven by factors other than what the austerity proponents maintain, or those proponents simply get the case wrong. Expectations leading to confidence fairies really are a fairy story. The few positive cases we can find are easily explained by currency devaluations and accommodative pacts with trade unions. In general, the deployment of austerity as economic policy has been as effective in us bringing peace, prosperity, and crucially, a sustained reduction of debt, as the Mongol Golden Horde was in furthering the development of Olympic dressage. It has instead brought us class politics, riots, political instability, more rather than less debt, assassinations, and war. It has never once “done what it says on the tin.” — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 614

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly reinforces and extends the sacrifice article’s theme of the real costs of devotion to harmful ideology, here applied to fiscal policy.
• CANDY: The Mongol Golden Horde versus Olympic dressage analogy is a memorable, tweetable line.
• XREF: connects to: Austerity became self-defeating because it worsened the deficits it claimed to fix — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 516; Austerity has failed systematically whenever governments face gold-standard-style constraints — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 504; Austerity logic ignores that growth, not cuts, may resolve debt — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 53 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Unequal austerity generates populism, nationalism, and violent movement instead of revenue #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 63
• Repeated austerity in Europe is failing despite being tried again and again. #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 262
• Austerity has failed systematically whenever governments face gold-standard-style constraints #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 504
• Austerity logic ignores that growth, not cuts, may resolve debt #expands (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 53
• Austerity only rarely works and its success conditions do not apply today #qualifies (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 274
• Austerity’s core claim that cuts lead to growth is dangerous nonsense #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 15