Austerity persists because commonsense appeal and conservative motives outweigh disproof

Evidence

John Quiggin usefully terms economic ideas that will not die despite huge logical inconsistencies and massive empirical failures as “zombie economics.” Austerity is a zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again, but it just keeps coming. Partly because the commonsense notion that “more debt doesn’t cure debt” remains seductive in its simplicity, and partly because it enables conservatives to try (once again) to run the detested welfare state out of town, it never seems to die. In sum, austerity is a dangerous idea for three reasons: it doesn’t work in practice, it relies on the poor paying for the mistakes of the rich, and it rests upon the absence of a rather large fallacy of composition that is all too present in the modern world. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 50

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces and applies Quiggin’s ‘zombie economics’ concept — a key definitional framework for the whole book.
• XREF: The idea of ideas surviving empirical refutation connects to Mattei’s treatment of austerity ideology as self-insulating doctrine, and to broader literature on paradigm persistence in economics. — connects to: Austerity persists as an ideology that resists empirical refutation — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 613; Austerity-bred consensus sustains further austerity in a self-reinforcing loop — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 235; Repeated austerity in Europe is failing despite being tried again and again. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 262 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity-bred consensus sustains further austerity in a self-reinforcing loop #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 235