As such, they can tell us something about the way we have set up debates about the meaning and bounds of economy. They are tied to polemics about who abides in the realm of imagination and fiction and who is clear-headed enough to see the order of the day. They entail specific notions about what the bounds of the economy are or should be. Issues of scarcity and austerity mobilise antagonistic assumptions about what it means to face economic reality. They have not brought the peace, prosperity and lower levels of debt they promised – instead, quite the opposite has happened in the immediate wake of these measures: the effects of austerity policies are portrayed as more debt, greater class division and added instability (Blyth, 2013: 220, 229).Īs I would like to show in this article, these arguments about austerity and scarcity not only concern different schools of economic policy. On the other hand, current austerity policies are found to be so fundamentally ineffective and erroneous in achieving what they set out to do that they appear as a political strategy based on ideological beliefs running counter to all evidence. From this perspective, the time has come to face harsh decisions about how to allocate resources in a post-affluent society (Krippner, 2011: 22). Even those who do not subscribe to neoliberal notions of the state and market argue that the finite nature of resources has been ignored in politics and finance alike before the crisis. They are seen as a return to realism in economic matters. On the one hand, they are understood as a regrettable but unavoidable purging of inflated values, overburdening debt and unsound finances. The political and economic meanings of these austerity measures are highly contentious. Some voices suspect that entirely new and creative forms of de-economisation and post-neoliberalism might ensue, given that large areas even lack the resources for maintaining minimal economic circulation. The most visible and dramatic consequences are municipal bankruptcies, financial emergency measures and a reduction of basic services ( ibid.: 637). Geographers speak of novel types of ‘austerity urbanism’ that are evolving (Peck, 2012). As researchers of public health tell us, the austerity cuts following the financial crisis can be understood as literally that: they cut the ‘body economic’ while they increase the number of suicides and infectious diseases, worsening health conditions for years to come (Stuckler and Bansay, 2013: ix, 140). The recent proliferation of austerity measures such as budget cuts in public services, wages and pensions have turned forms of ‘extreme economy’ (Merriam-Webster, 2014) into a palpable reality in many countries.
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