Austerity was historically contingent, not inevitable

Evidence

Bailing led to debt. Debt led to crisis. Crisis led to austerity. Perhaps we could have avoided this sequence—as this book has shown, there were moments of choice. There was nothing inevitable about austerity—even if its root cause is a too big to bail banking system stuck inside a modern gold standard/monetary doomsday device that seems to have limited the options to “add central bank liquidity, squeeze the budget, and pray.” — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 621

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Denmark’s austerity cuts occurred during a boom, not a slump — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 564; Austerity is a permanent structural rule, not a 1970s anomaly — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 162; Austerity is structural to capitalism, not a 1970s neoliberal aberration. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 162 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity is a permanent structural rule, not a 1970s anomaly #contradicts (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 162
• Austerity is structural to capitalism, not a 1970s neoliberal aberration. #contradicts (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 162
• Austerity’s core principles predate the twentieth century by a century of classical economics #contradicts (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 718