[Austerity was once a conservative rationale for cutting spending.
Now, it’s an explanation of the consequences.]
[[link removed]]

THE WORD THAT MAKES BRUTAL BUDGETS SOUND “TRULY EVIL”  
[[link removed]]


 

Ruqaiyah Zarook
January 31, 2023
Mother Jones
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Austerity was once a conservative rationale for cutting spending.
Now, it’s an explanation of the consequences. _

, Triboro

 

The cuts have come even for the word itself. “Austerity” is a
cornerstone
[[link removed]]
of conservatism—a catch-all term for limiting government spending to
promote capitalist growth—and yet the expression seems to have
disappeared from deficit hawks’ speeches. “I call it balancing the
budget,
[[link removed]]”
said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013. “Everyone else is
using this term ‘austerity.’ That makes it sound like something
truly evil.”

Yes. That aura of “evil” is perhaps why writers, especially on the
left, return to it again and again. As economists Clara Mattei and Sam
Salour argue
[[link removed]],
“austerity” is a helpful word to describe what the failed policies
of neoliberalism have done since the 1970s across the world: subdued
the working class by driving up unemployment
[[link removed]],
keeping wages stagnant
[[link removed]],
and reducing welfare spending
[[link removed]].
The word connects everyday issues to structural decay caused by a
fiscal playbook. Austerity is, as economic journalist Doug Henwood has
argued, “causing America to rot
[[link removed]].”

Historically, the word gave market cruelties a whiff of moralism
[[link removed]].
Drawing on the ancient Greek _austeros_ (“what makes the tongue dry
[[link removed]]”),
it offered a religious ring to financial asceticism. It was how one
could argue that cutting social spending was a path to self-­reliance
[[link removed]].
But over the last decade, there has been a shift. Too many people have
lived under the actual policies
[[link removed]].
Austerity has moved from being a rationale for slashing government
budgets to a damning
[[link removed]]
critique of the consequences
[[link removed]].
In the reversal, you can see what many think of living under this
anti–social spending project: It sucks.

The moral project of austerity has its beginnings
[[link removed]]
in John Locke’s _Second Treatise_
[[link removed]].
Written in 17th-century England, it was a time when, as economist Mark
Blyth notes, “public debt [was] the debt of kings
[[link removed]]”
and rulers invoked God as a justification for appropriating wealth as
they pleased. Locke found this arbitrary. He argued, in his now-famous
philosophical framework, that governments should primarily safeguard
[[link removed]]
private property. To undermine the monarchy’s influence, Locke
preached limited government
[[link removed].].
Freedom, he explained, through austerity.

But this Lockean card is regularly overplayed. The modern rhetoric of
austerity politics has firmer roots
[[link removed]]
in the Confederate resistance to Reconstruction. As W.E.B. Du Bois
documented in _Black Reconstruction_
[[link removed]],
white planter elites pushed back on new multiracial governments made
up of Black people and poor white people by proclaiming them
irresponsible, corrupt, and plagued by extravagant spending. For much
of American political history, a repudiation of the underclass
[[link removed]]
was inherent in the push for small government. Austerity offered up
economic hardship as a disciplinary tool.

This cruelty to the poor can be easily seen through Andrew Mellon,
Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, who said in the face of the
Great Depression that the downturn would rid the system
[[link removed]]
of “rottenness” and lead people to “live a more moral life.”
Or Mitt Romney, who in 2012 said 47 percent of Americans were
“takers” not “makers,”
[[link removed]]
and told an audience of the wealthy that his “job is not to worry
about those people.” Here, freedom is weaponized as a way to abandon
the poor.

In the years following the Great Recession of 2008, austerity took
divergent routes in the United States. On the left, Occupy Wall Street
argued that the real corruption
[[link removed]]
was our inability to “tax the rich
[[link removed]]”
(remember the chants?) in order to fund a safety net for the poor
[[link removed]].
On the right, the tea party depicted social spending as theft
[[link removed]]. The left
won some followers, but the right won power
[[link removed]]
in Congress. In 2012, a series of spending cuts
[[link removed]]—predominantly
in health, education, and social services—were implemented, and a
new “age of austerity
[[link removed]]”
was born.

Yet after living under austerity policies for more than a decade,
polls
[[link removed]]
show Americans are tired of the unequal discipline
[[link removed]].
They want the government to ensure their basic needs: food, housing,
public education, and clean air and water. The movement
[[link removed]] for a $15 minimum wage has gained
momentum
[[link removed]]
among major companies, many cities, and some states. The right’s
promise of a moral high ground gained from thrift seems not to be as
appealing anymore. A decade of spending cuts has made “austerity”
sound a lot less like salvation and more like hell.

====

* Austerity
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]