[lotsofmangos]

Austerity politics is bonkers. When there is a recession, the state is the entity that can still borrow and lend at reasonable rates. The money will still be borrowed, but with the state pulling back, it is borrowed at rates that would make a loan-shark blush.

[danmaz74]

The whole problem with Greece is that the state CAN'T borrow on the market at reasonable rates. That's why they asked (and received) over €200BN in credits from the other EU countries, plus I don't remember how much from the IMF.

[msellout]

If they cannot borrow Euros, they will have two options: default on promises to Greeks (pensions, etc.) or leave the Eurozone and return to their own currency which they can "borrow" from hypothetical wealthier future taxpayers.

[ZeroGravitas]

Implementing dubious political experiments being forced on them as a condition of loans could also be described as a "default on promises to Greeks".

[antman]

The problem is that it the Troika plan half-defaulted Greece in 2010. That half-way policy made Greece lose credibility with private institutions without substantially decreasing its debt.

[gadders]

That's strange, because it's working fine in the UK.

[jonnycowboy]

Austerity has already been debunked as being the best way to economic advancement / recovery, even the IMF agrees: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/reinhart-rogoff-deb...

[jwdunne]

Whhy do you think it's a success in the UK? There are many that don't think it's working at all. I'm not criticising your position, I'm just intensely curious.

[akhatri_aus]

Because the UK went on heavy on cutting its budget, whereas the US went heavy on increasing expenditure (Fiscal keynesian style). The way the UK did it should have dragged them into recession but the UK employment rate improved to under 6% (in spite of the sensationalised immigration 'issue') and the economic growth rate is doing pretty good (on a relative basis to the other G* countries).

I don't want to get into the contentious political issues involved but I'll say this too: There may be some argument to the loss involved due the budget cuts but on the typical economic numbers its not too bad/quite good considering austerity was used.

1. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-...

[tjradcliffe]

I've seen this claim as well, but the data don't seem to support it. UK spending for all levels of government 2008-2014 in constant (2005) pounds (data from: http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/download_multi_year_2008_2...):

    Year	GDP	Pop	Spending £ bln 2005
    2008	MW gdp	61.548	582.23	
    2009	MW gdp	61.904	623.50	
    2010	1564.9	62.262	697.65	
    2011	1600.2	62.649	699.89	
    2012	1621.6	63.067	692.43	
    2013	1632	63.488	661.32	
    2014	1665.6	63.912	525.22	

There's a huge drop 2013-2014, but before that the spend-up was pretty considerable, and economic growth has been solid since the start of 2013, so if this be "austerity", make the most of it!

EDIT: the drop in 2014 is due to local government not being added in. If I look at just "Central Government" from the same source:

    2008	MW gdp	61.548	427.07	
    2009	MW gdp	61.904	458.29	
    2010	1564.9	62.262	516.99	
    2011	1600.2	62.649	517.16	
    2012	1621.6	63.067	522.42	
    2013	1632	63.488	496.97	
    2014	1665.6	63.912	525.22

Again, hard to claim much "austerity" in these data.

[akhatri_aus]

Austerity can't be looked at only from the spending point of view, especially since it carries with it an element of affordability. Its also about looking at taxation receipts.

On overall the deficit between the two has been decreasing which is where the 'austerity' terminology is used. The comparison comes in handy where alot of Europe has been going through this (in spite of decreasing or low economic growth) whereas the US increased its deficits too.

What I mean to say is austerity is tied more to the affordability as opposed to the absolute dollar amounts.

Deficits

Year Amount 2009 156.3 2010 148.6 2011 120.6 2012 99.5

[programLyrique]

Does the UK employement rate include the "zero-hour contracts"?...

[moomin]

Indeed, the UK economy is turning around, but it's not clear that's the result of the austerity politics or just the underlying strength of the UK.

And net immigration is down, which is a sign that other countries are becoming comparatively more attractive.

Finally, George Osborne has discovered the same thing that dogged Gordon Brown: tax receipts are stubbornly failing to rise in line with economic growth.

[evgen]

Actually, today's report has not immigration up to within 2000 of the highest ever recorded. I guess those who vote with their feet disagrees with your assessment.

[moomin]

You're right, it's changed a lot in the last year.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's not. The government sharply cut when they got into power, then eased off a bit so that we got a tiny amount of growth to coincide with the election, now they're going to cut more again.

So success if you're a neo-con distaster capitalist, failure for everyone else.

[gadders]

So all those people that voted for the policy to continue two weeks ago are neo-con disaster capitalists? I never know there were that many of them.

[tjradcliffe]

Your account of UK economic growth is not correct: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32493745

Economic growth in the UK was about 0.5% quarterly for all of 2013 and 2014, and actually dropped to one of the lowest rates in the past two years in the quarter before the election. So unless you broaden "coincide" to mean "the two years preceding an election", or almost half the currently fixed term of Parliament it is not posisble to sustain the claim you make. And if governments can reliably provide economic expansion over two years it isn't clear why they wouldn't do so all the time.

The social construction of "neo-cons" and "distaster capitalists" as the hated Other by the Left cannot mask the underlying objective reality that austerity policies have not been anything like the disaster that was confidently predicted, and may have even done some good, although I'm sure the proper economic analysis of the effect of these policies is a good deal more nuanced than the simple post hoc ergo propter hoc claim that pundits will be making, although the pundits on the Right do have the slight advantage of not having to actually make up facts to support their view in this case.

EDIT: in an equally contrarian reply to another comment above I did some digging into government expenditures in the UK and your claim fails on that basis as well. Government expenditures are mostly up between 2008 and 2014 inclusive.

[gadders]

The economy is growing again, unemployment is down, and most people just voted for the policy to continue.

[discodave]

That which is claimed without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.