Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Mark Blyth
Language: EnglishKeywords:
Austerity
Capitalism
Economics
Neoliberalism
Plutocracy
Politics
UK Politics
US politics
Shared by:daenigma100
Written by
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts - austerity - to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget.
The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn’t work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we recognize austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.
| Announce URL: | udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce |
| This Torrent also has several backup trackers | |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce |
| Tracker: | udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce |
| Creation Date: | Fri, 04 Dec 2020 18:39:06 +0000 |
| This is a Multifile Torrent | |
| Mark Blyth - Austerity Audiobook.mp3 303.09 MBs | |
| File Size: | 303.09 MBs |
| Piece Size: | 512 KBs |
| Encoding: | UTF-8 |
| Info Hash: | bc428a5c767fbde755f901fa2671a7759e883133 |
| Torrent Download | Torrent Free Downloads |
| Tips | Sometimes the torrent health info isn’t accurate, so you can download the file and check it out or try the following downloads. |
| Direct Download | Start Direct Download |
| Tips | You could try out alternative bittorrent clients. |
| Secured Download | Download Files Now |
| Ad |
|
This post has 6 comments
December 4th, 2020
“austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget.”
That’s not what austerity means.
December 4th, 2020
The description of the book sounds dated. Trump and Obama are not guilty of austerity.
I want a book explaining why my money will never again earn interest in the bank (If interest rates go up nations default on debt servicing?) and what Larry Fink is up to shoring up our beloved corporations.
I don’t see how I am a winner in this game.
December 4th, 2020
Thanks. The reviews look good, so I’m interested to listen…
***
Blyth writes in the tradition of Keynes, slashing away at orthodoxy and the orthodox, emphasising the power of ideas as well as interests in shaping outcomes, ranging widely over the history of economic and political thought, expressing deep scepticism about financial actors, and rejecting the curtailment of spending as the solution to a period of excess. (Lawrence Summers, Financial Times)
Austerity: The History of Dangerous Ideas is a masterful combination of economic history and intellectual history that puts the current policy debate into a balanced and sophisticated perspective. Anyone who wants to understand what is going on in the world at the moment should read it. Right away. (Ha-Joon Chang, Irish Times)
December 5th, 2020
@AndyBook read the whole blurb. Earlier it describes austerity as “draconian budget cuts”. Presumably the other description refers to the effects of austerity.
December 6th, 2020
@jsynapses I’m happy to summarize why you can’t count on savings account interest.
First, remember that money is like any other product: if there’s a glut, the price goes down. A high savings rate without adequate investment opportunities *drives down the price of money* — which is expressed in the interest rate. Central banks can raise the interest rate, but that will strangle growth, further exacerbating the problem. Scroll here and correlate the Prime Rate with recessions… http://www.fedprimerate.com/wall_street_journal_prime_rate_history.htm
Second, remember the power of the press: a country that borrows in its own currency might devalue that currency, but won’t by any means necessarily default.
For example, Argentine was heavily leveraged in dollars — Boom! Greece is part of the EU and doesn’t control its own monetary policy: DANGER! It’s practically impossible for the UK or US to default. If you google “UK historical national debt” and the Wikipedia page for History of the British national debt; you might, for example, wonder why it didn’t default in 1949 with debt approaching 250% of GDP. Because it didn’t have to.
October 26th, 2024
Re-upload please.
Add a comment (please log in before commenting)