Another hectic week looms – I’m doing book-related interviews and events including this at the CSFI in London tomorrow – and at the moment feel like climbing back under the duvet to read. So to steel myself, I’ve packed Florian Schui’s [amazon_link id=”0300203934″ target=”_blank” ]Austerity: The Great Failure[/amazon_link] into my bag. It will be interesting to see how it compares/contrasts with Mark Blyth’s [amazon_link id=”019982830X” target=”_blank” ]Austerity: The History of A Dangerous Idea.[/amazon_link] The summary and subtitle make it clear it comes to the same conclusion. And the index makes equally little reference to debt, which seems to me an important variable when comparing austerity episodes, and indeed in concluding as the back cover does: “There are no convincing economic arguments for austerity policies in their current form and there is no compelling moral or political case for them either.” So there must as a matter of logic be some explicit or implicit moral and economic arguments here about alternative means of decreasing debt burdens.
[amazon_image id=”0300203934″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Austerity: The Great Failure[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”019982830X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea[/amazon_image]
Implicit, according to The Economist’s review (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21597872-even-after-2500-years-austerity-not-all-its-cracked-up-be-carry-spending):
“The book has virtually nothing on the EU debt crisis, nor does he attempt to distinguish between countries that voluntarily enter into austerity programmes (like Britain) and those which have austerity forced upon them because they cannot get access to the markets (such as Greece). One reason not to spend beyond your means, whether you are an individual or a country, is that you eventually cede power to your creditors.”