- Title
- Beyond austerity: deficit mania is built on a series of destructive neoliberal myths
- Creator
- Mitchell, William
- Relation
- The Nation Vol. 292, Issue 14
- Relation
- http://www.thenation.com/article/159288/beyond-austerity#
- Publisher
- The Nation Company
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- When President Obama announced in December 2009 that “We don’t have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis,” the leader of the largest economy in the world told us that, despite having caused the worst economic crisis in eighty years, neoliberalism was still firmly in charge. The global economic crisis might suggest that the neoliberal promise—that markets can self-regulate and deliver sustained prosperity for all—was a lie. But that doesn’t seem to have registered with governments, which have, without exception, built their responses to the crisis on a series of myths—the same myths that caused the crisis. Despite millions remaining jobless and poverty rates rising, governments have claimed that there is no alternative but to impose austerity by cutting budget deficits. In the United States and among most parties in Europe—whether in government or opposition—the unquestioned dominance of neoliberal ideology has reduced economic debate to questions of nuance. So conservatives eschew tax increases and want larger spending cuts, whereas progressives favor a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. This homogenization of the political debate has not only stifled progressive voices; it is also obscuring the only credible route to recovery.
- Subject
- GFC; neoliberalism; debt; austerity measures
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1049558
- Identifier
- uon:15048
- Identifier
- ISSN:0027-8378
- Language
- eng
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