Interwar international institutions framed balanced budgets as a truth citizens needed coercion to accept

Evidence

In the same vein, the League of Nations had addressed the necessity of “keeping expenditure within income,” balancing expenditure out of revenue: “Th is principle must be clearly brought home to the peoples of all countries; for it will be impossible otherwise to arouse them from a dream of false hopes and illusions to the recognition of hard facts” (Th ree months of the League of Nations, vol. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 723

Categorization

• QUESTION: The phrase ‘dream of false hopes and illusions’ — how did the architects of austerity characterize the pre-austerity fiscal worldview as a delusion? This framing of balanced budgets as ‘fact’ vs. deficits as ‘illusion’ is worth unpacking.
• CANDY: The League of Nations literally described deficit-tolerant publics as dreaming false dreams that must be aroused from — a vivid, quotable line about propaganda framing.
• XREF: connects to: Postwar financial officials elevated balanced budgets to a universal moral principle — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1683; Interwar currency conferences prescribed government spending cuts as currency stabilization — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1683; Interwar elites framed fiscal contraction as the individual duty of recovery — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 821 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Interwar experts sold austerity as objective science concealing true economic facts from the people #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 744
• Interwar elites framed fiscal contraction as the individual duty of recovery #corroborates (0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 821
• Interwar currency conferences prescribed government spending cuts as currency stabilization #corroborates (0.86) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1683
• Postwar financial officials elevated balanced budgets to a universal moral principle #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1683
• Institutional intelligence narratives construct truth to serve political policy needs #expands (0.78)
• Postwar IMF Keynesianism concealed classical liberal assumptions derived from 1920s Treasury logic #corroborates (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 443
• Postwar experts framed inflation as caused by wartime state interference with market laws #responds-to (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 755