Austerity and Recovery from Recession–a Paradox

“Mark Thomason (6:51 pm 2/19) is correct: austerity policies provide real and significant benefits to the few, the elite, the ones making the policies.

For starters, austerity policies:

– keep tax rates low for the wealthy, and for those claiming unearned income

– drive wages down, severely

– generate insecurity among workers so that they so fear for their survival that they will do as they’re told, without complaint or attempting to organize unions)

– drive prices of real property down, severely, and those with money can swoop in and buy at fire sale prices

– deprive people of the government benefits that were previously “guaranteed” so that they will distrust government and any other promises made in the future

– increase the disparity between the wealthy and non-wealthy, because what fun is it to be wealthy if it doesn’t make you stand out as “special”?

– prevent educational opportunity to the young of the non-wealthy, thereby enhancing the opportunity for the young of the wealthy, giving them an even better head start in life

– make people so fearful for their own survival that they begin to lash out at others “beneath” them, or at public employees who have it better than they do; scrabbling for scraps keeps our attention focused away from those really calling the shots

– accustom people to a life of kowtowing to employers for even poverty wages, and voila! Good help is now quite easy to find!

Austerity would not be adopted if there were no benefit to elites.”

This comment was the most popular one in the comment thread, out of 790 comments accepted.  It even beat out “Winning Progressive” who usually comments first and wins the popularity contest.

It reflects a cause and effect relationship that I have always used to understand things: things that happen have reasons to happen, despite whatever reasons make it unlikely to happen.  In this case, instituting austerity policies, despite their obvious history of failure in every instance in which they have been applied, still occurs under the direction of the controlling authorities.  Why?  Because they benefit the elites in control.  The only way to change this is to wrest power, by constitutional means, from those who currently are making the great mass of people suffer needlessly for their own private benefit.