UK austerity—the great tradition of trying to balance the budget by squeezing the poor like a lemon in a Dickensian cocktail.
If you're wondering why the government keeps doing it, even after roughly a decade of it not working particularly well, the answer is somewhere between ideology, math cosplay, and cynical political theater.
🧾 Official Reasons (The PR Brochure)
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Reduce the national debt.
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"We’ve spent too much, we must tighten our belts!"
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Sounds responsible, like a parent saying “no more biscuits, we’re broke.”
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Restore market confidence.
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The idea is that cutting public spending makes investors feel good, like giving a glass of warm milk to the Invisible Hand of the Market.
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Supposedly lowers borrowing costs and stabilizes the currency.
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“We have no money left.”
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Always a crowd-pleaser. Said with sad eyes and spreadsheets.
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Despite the fact that governments literally create currency and debt isn’t the same as household finances unless your house is also a sovereign monetary entity with its own central bank.
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🤔 Real Reasons (Behind the Curtain)
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Ideological Obsession with Small Government
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The desire for a smaller state. Less public spending = fewer services = more privatization = more donors smiling at wine-and-cheese fundraisers.
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Punish the Poor for Existing
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Austerity often hits welfare, healthcare, education, and local councils. Not hedge funds. Not yacht clubs. Not tax havens.
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It’s dressed up as “fiscal discipline” but functionally it’s:
“What if we solved inequality by making poor people suffer slightly more?”
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The “We’re Not Labour” Strategy
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Austerity as a branding tool: “Look, we’re tax-and-spend types. We’re responsible adults with briefcases.”
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It’s Politically Easy
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Cutting funding to nebulous “bureaucracy” plays well with voters who haven’t tried to call the council in 10 years.
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It’s much harder to raise taxes on the wealthy or corporations, because they own newspapers and make angry phone calls to Parliament.
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📉 But... Does It Work?
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Short answer: No.
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Longer answer: It slows economic recovery, increases inequality, and causes public services to collapse like a flan in a cupboard.
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Example: The UK’s austerity measures slowed GDP growth for years. The NHS is now underfunded, councils are literally going bankrupt, and child poverty soared. But hey, the bond markets were “calm.”
🏚️ Austerity Is Like:
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Fixing a broken car by removing the engine to save petrol.
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Treating anemia by donating blood.
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Rebalancing your diet by eating less food and fewer nutrients.
TL;DR:
The UK government pursues austerity because it looks responsible, pleases markets, reinforces class ideology, and plays well in front of voters who think the deficit is more dangerous than, say, hospitals closing. It’s economic cosplay with real casualties.
And the best part? When it doesn’t work, they just say:
"Well clearly we didn’t cut hard enough."
Rinse. Repeat. Collapse a few councils. Blame immigrants.
The classics.
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