Austerity is voluntary deflation achieved by cutting state budgets to restore competitiveness

Evidence

Austerity is a form of voluntary deflation in which the economy adjusts through the reduction of wages, prices, and public spending to restore competitiveness, which is (supposedly) best achieved by cutting the state’s budget, debts, and deficits. Doing so, its advocates believe, will inspire “business confidence” since the government will neither be “crowding-out” the market for investment by sucking up all the available capital through the issuance of debt, nor adding to the nation’s already “too big” debt. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core working definition of austerity that the whole book interrogates — the reader needs this definition to anchor claim-pairs with Mattei.
• XREF: Defines the concept the reader is building toward in Mattei; the crowding-out and business-confidence rationales link to fiscal-conservatism literature. — connects to: Returning to gold required deliberate deflation in post-WWI Europe. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 499; Successful austerity required devaluation and boom timing, not fiscal contraction alone. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 503; Austerity is state intervention transferring resources from the many to the few — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 195 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity is state intervention transferring resources from the many to the few #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 195
• Austerity is state intervention that transfers resources from workers to capital #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 195
• Austerity is a counteroffensive that shifts resources from workers to investors. #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1467
• Austerity’s real function is permanent structural extraction from many to few #complicates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 657
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #qualifies (0.75)
• Austerity policies function to silence working class economic demands #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 774
• Austerity capitalism means more state intervention, not less, to fortify the market #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 151
• Austerity’s three pressures function to foreclose the imagination of alternatives. #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 156
• Fixed exchange rates force austerity when competitiveness declines #expands (0.72)
• The gold standard naturalized austerity by removing it from political dispute #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1302
• Austerity suppresses consumer demand by starving the population that sustains the economy #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 349
• Austerity emerged only once states became large enough budgetary entities to cut #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 268