The Austerians Attack!

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http://inthesetimes.com/article/12576/the_austerians_attack/


A member of the Occupy movement demonstrates outside the Iowa Democratic Party Headquarters on Dc. 29, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

When the economic and financial crisis erupted in 2008, progressives hoped that it would trigger a popular revulsion against the right-wing economic policies that caused the crisis. It is now clear that these expectations are not being met. Moderate progressive policy moves have been overwhelmed

by public-sector layoffs and budget cuts as Republicans, too many Democrats and even President Barack Obama himself, have chosen austerity or “belt-tightening” as a main policy objective.

But how did the dogma of these “Austerians” – inspired by the Austrian School of economics – come to dominate public policy?

Progressives were not the only ones hoping to seize the opportunity of the economic crisis. A right-wing coalition of ideologues and industrialists saw it as a chance to achieve final victory in the war they have waged since the 1930s to destroy the New Deal institutions built under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and extended through the late 1970s.