Austerity was framed as a nation’s moral duty requiring harder work and savings
Evidence
Without paying your way as a nation, without getting that equilibrium and stability which is at the basis of confi dence, there can be no hope whatsoever. To that we have to devote all our energies. How are we to do it? I think the answer is a very painful one and yet a very simple one. It is this: that we must all work hard, live hard and save hard. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 686
Categorization
- DEFINE: Lord Chalmers’s ‘work hard, live hard, save hard’ is the canonical austerity slogan worth identifying precisely.
- SEED: The three-word austerity creed as a through-line from 1920s Brussels to modern fiscal-policy rhetoric could anchor an essay.
- XREF: connects to: Austerity rhetoric demanded whole nations work, live, and save harder.; Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 803; Monetary austerity was designed to moralize and discipline economic behavior toward thrift — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 759 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Austerity rhetoric demanded whole nations work, live, and save harder.
#corroborates(0.95) - Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor
#corroborates(0.92) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 803 - Austerity was framed by its architects as redemptive sacrifice required for recovery
#corroborates(0.90) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 113 - Monetary austerity was designed to moralize and discipline economic behavior toward thrift
#corroborates(0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 759 - Eurozone austerity was framed as moral redemption for past fiscal sins
#expands(0.82) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 109 - Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice.
#corroborates(0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135