Austerity.
It’s the tequila of economic debates: The theory always leads us to trouble, we hate ourselves the morning after, and we swear we’ll never try it again.
And yet, no matter how often we repeat this routine, we’ll immediately grab it as a cure-all to our problems once hard times hit again.
Unlike your favorite agave alcohol however, austerity’s effects are much worse than a nasty hangover and some regrettable texts. This damaging economic practice, a hot fad in Washington D.C., has wrought a stagnate economy, continued unemployment, and crushing blows to the poor.
In other words, dancing with this devil can’t be remedied with a Vitamin Water and bagel.
The question for economists and politicians moving forward, if they’re serious about economic growth, is how to free the American public from the austerity myth.
Here’s one intervention strategy –
Invoke the Separation of Church and State.
Illuminating austerity in its proper light — that of a faith-based religion and NOT a sound economic theory — will be the only way a moderate majority finally rejects this utter failure of policy.
Sadly, today’s economic debate, as many unemployed Americans are indirectly learning, is not actually over economics. Much like Climate Change, there is little debate on correct actions.
Short-term spending is needed to boost growth. Since no one in the private sector is willing, increased government spending is necessary until private spending ticks back up.
Debate over, right? Washington passes another stimulus and hits the links early, we get more jobs and more pay to presumably blow at the nearest casino, and everyone high-fives for a productive 2013.
Wrong.
And that’s because pro-austerity advocates aren’t looking for an economic solution. Their true goal — while millions wait desperately for employment — is a reintroduction of morality into the economic sphere.
Before nodding your head in agreement, keep in mind these ideologues have no use for the morality a majority of the country desires. They have zero interest in Wall Street regulation, or increased transparency on shady deals to swindle customers, or even establishing a new sense of community in the dog-eat-dog capital markets.
Austerity advocates only want to establish “morality” in certain areas, pockets within our economic system they’ve deemed as the “original economic sin” which deserve the harshest repentance:
Social safety nets.
A crusade against the poorest and most vulnerable of our population — those Takers and Welfare Queens of legends’ lore — austerity advocates see a mission to remake the economic system to their self-righteous preference (presumably so God stops punishing us with housing bubbles and faulty derivatives?)
Don’t believe me?
Look how each side presents their arguments for policy.
Where Keynes and Krugman inject data, math, history and evidence into their models, austerity advocates interject faith.
A faith that the purposeful strangulation of an economy through budget cuts will weed out the all the undeserving, just like The Flood did for Noah; that drastic cuts — painful, self-inflicting wounds — will cleanse us of rottenness, like religious self-mutilation does for the individual (instead of whippings, it’s literal starvation); and though subtle but essential, that the very wealthy should be completely unaffected by austerity because they’re intrinsically more deserving of wealth than the poor, just like Moses and his followers were more deserving to survive the Red Sea crossing than the undeserving Egyptians.
If it sounds insane, that’s because it is. But it’s guided our political policies for over two years, and has been increasingly popular among Beltway pundits.
Proponents of real economic growth, those against a holy crusade over the poor, have an innate disadvantage during policy discussions. Economics can be complicated, but the Realists must recognize that in politics, any time you’re explaining, you’re losing. If we are to prevent more needless suffering, austerity policies must be instantly shown for what they truly are — a Puritanical self-therapy aimed at scrubbing away “our sins” (if by sin you mean erasing those pesky hangers-on at the bottom of the food chain) while simultaneously providing moral cover for the growing gap of income disparity.
Most Americans strongly believe in the separation of Church and State.
They correctly reject extreme faith-based methods of practice in fields such as medicine, when life and death is on the line.
It’s time to remind the public that faith-based economics must be held with the same skepticism.
It’s time to ween America off austerity once and for all.
The Writer's Paradox 