The periodical Dissent recently reviewed two books on austerity as the answer to the current recession. Mark Blyth, author of Austerity, defines the term as a “the policy of cutting the state’s budget to promote growth.” Robert Kuttner, in Debtors’ Prison, labels austerity as “Agony Economics.” Both authors make the point that austerity as government policy in a recession is a disaster.
What’s amazing is that John Maynard Keynes explained all of this in the Twenties. After World War II, we practiced Keynesian economics, and it worked. Then along came Reagan and his ilk, and we moved away from Keynesian economics to a fixation about the national debt. (Amazingly, the debt under Reagan exceeded the combined debt of every president from Washington to Reagan.) The Republican answer to our current recession is to cut government spending, which is the very thing that makes the recession worse.
Over six years after the crash of ’08 we still need about 8 million jobs to move the U.S. economy to pre-recession levels. In Europe, which has been practicing austerity even more than the U.S., unemployment in Greece, Spain, and Portugal is over 25%.
The economy is still sputtering, the middle class is hollowed out, wages are stagnant, and what are the Republicans worried about? The deficit. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
No comments:
Post a Comment