"Austeridade" (5)

No seguimento de "Austeridade" (4), We All Prefer Growth to Austerity por Anthony de Jasay:

The common people all over Europe complain bitterly about having to get by on the thin gruel of austerity. Their governments point to the debt mountain that must at least be stopped from growing faster than incomes, and if possible stopped altogether from growing, in order to remain bearable at all ..

.. How to get growth going? Knee jerk economics would spend more, increasing consumer demand and initiate infrastructure projects. However, this is precisely the policy of the last twenty years, and look where it has got us; to a debt mountain that is still growing and to output that is not.

Growth, it seems, must be got going without relaxing austerity; one foot pushing the accelerator, the other forcing down the brake to the floor. Unsurprisingly, nothing much happens. Governments in their awkward posture must face an electorate reluctant to be deprived of chocolate cake.