Austerity grips Europe and has been the heavy anchor the keeps the Democrats from being something other than a center right party. The idea that entitlements must be cut to "save them for future generations" is on the lips of everyone in Washington. It plays on the deepest desires of most conservatives. They get to wave their finger at the disabled, the downtrodden, and the elderly, and tell them "You've lived too high on the hog. It's time you took more personal responsibility," thereby implying that all the money these groups PAID into these programs is for naught. Many authoritarian Democrats will join in, and agree with the need for austerity without any understanding of why there would be such a need in the first place, or offer anything other than an echo of Republican policies, except packaged nicer.
The austerity movement and the trickle down warriors wave Reinhart and Rogoff as the intellectual basis for their cruelty. The study that "proved" that debt and job growth were somehow related and that countries with high debt loads experience low economic growth. The Tea Party flooded the streets with this as their battle cry. Cult of logic centrists nodded their heads in assent, without anyone questioning WHY this correlation even existed. After all, what does the local bakery care if the U.S. government's debt is 1 or 2 trillion? Investors can bet with derivative contracts about whether or not the debt will be financed, but these people put their money towards horse racing, not building new innovations or establishing new foundations for knowledge. Well, a young graduate student has taken an axe to Reinhart and Rogoff, and has proven that their data set is flawed and their study does not prove what it says.
Why? Well, they left out data. You see, to progressives, the entire conservative and libertarian platform is contradicted by reality. If conservatives are right, and providing systems to manage health care, housing, food, education, and retirement, through government, to their citizenry makes their citizenry lazy and shiftless, then all of the Nordic countries should be filled with shuttered business and obese, money crazed thieves who would kill their mother for an Obama-phone. However, Nordic countries have stable economies with parental and maternal leave, have great health care outcomes, and in general were able to weather the financial collapse of 2008-9. Canada's housing market was stable because of their regulatory environment and Australia has a high minimum wage. Yet business booms in these countries and it's not just due to fossil fuels.
Not surprisingly, conservatives try to say that the reason socialism works in these countries is because they're small, they are ethnically homogenous, or that the system is small enough for people to handle. The first one is illogical, the second is racist, and the third is contradicted by reality. High minimum wage does not lead to high consumer prices, government health care can in many ways HELP businesses who do not want to be in the health care game, and regulation agencies work when they do their job and are not corrupt. You'd think economists like Reinhart and Rogoff would have taken this into account into their study.
Data from Canada and Australia were missing, as well from several other countries. The data DOES NOT tell the story of "countries with high debt to GDP ratio experience low rates of economic growth." Rogoff and Reinhart may not have intended to leave out precious data, but at the same time, they cannot be cleared of their bungling. And we cannot let their bungling translate to our elected leaders. That's what conservatives and right wingers do.
Austerity makes no sense. It does not take a hard nosed look at your economy. It just says to cut programs, even if they are successful and are helpful to the country. All other voices are silent. Morality is not taken into account. It is alright to oppose austerity because now it has lost it's intellectual support. If anyone, including the President, wants austerity, then they are destroying the economy based on their conservative leanings; and let's get one thing straight, Obama is a center right person with a center right philosophical bent.