Post-2010 austerity made the poor pay for a banking crisis they did not cause
Evidence
Cameron and Osborne unleashed capitalist realism 2.0, the most audacious confidence trick in recent political history: make the poor and vulnerable pay for the banking crisis. Use the crisis as a pretext to destroy even more of the welfare state. Sigh their fake sighs, and tell us what “difficult choices” they had to make… … Today, if my wife and I earned what we did in 2010, we would receive only £50 in tax credits a month. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1820
Categorization
- XREF: Concrete fiscal reinforcement of ch91’s claim that neoliberalism uses crises it caused to deepen its agenda — gives the earlier claim a pound-figure illustration. — connects to: Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 783; The 2009 bailout rescued bankers while imposing austerity on workers — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 391; The European debt crisis resulted from banking losses, not sovereign overspending — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 40 (+5 more)
- SHARE: The £300-to-£50 tax-credit collapse under identical nominal income is a precise, personal datapoint for anyone tracking austerity’s effect on household income.
Broader Connections
- The 2009 bailout rescued bankers while imposing austerity on workers
#corroborates(0.88) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 391 - Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital
#expands(0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 783 - European austerity is a bait-and-switch to save banks from themselves without admitting it
#corroborates(0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 208 - The European debt crisis resulted from banking losses, not sovereign overspending
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 40 - European fiscal crises were consequences of private banking crises, not their cause
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 205 - The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity
#expands(0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950 - Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers.
#qualifies(0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154