1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790979403321

Autore

Schui Florian <1973->

Titolo

Austerity : the great failure / / Florian Schui

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, Connecticut : , : Yale University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-300-20624-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (232 p.)

Disciplina

339.4/7

Soggetti

Consumption (Economics) - History

Thriftiness - History

Saving and investment - History

Economic policy - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1 Austere ideas for austere societies: from Aristotle to Aquinas -- 2 Austerity v. reason: from Mandeville to Voltaire -- 3 Austerity for capitalism: from Smith to Weber -- 4 Austerity for stability: from the Great War to the next -- 5 Austerity can wait: Keynes -- 6 Austerity for the state: Hayek -- 7 Austerity for the planet: green ideas of consumption -- 8 Is greed good? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Austerity is at the center of political debates today. Its defenders praise it as a panacea that will prepare the ground for future growth and stability. Critics insist it will precipitate a vicious cycle of economic decline, possibly leading to political collapse. But the notion that abstinence from consumption brings benefits to states, societies, or individuals is hardly new. This book puts the debates of our own day in perspective by exploring the long history of austerity-a popular idea that lives on despite a track record of dismal failure. Florian Schui shows that arguments in favor of austerity were-and are today-mainly based on moral and political considerations, rather than on economic analysis. Unexpectedly, it is the critics of austerity who have framed their arguments in the language of economics. Schui finds that austerity has failed intellectually and in economic terms every time it



has been attempted. He examines thinkers who have influenced our ideas about abstinence from Aristotle through such modern economic thinkers as Smith, Marx, Veblen, Weber, Hayek, and Keynes, as well as the motives behind specific twentieth-century austerity efforts. The persistence of the concept cannot be explained from an economic perspective, Schui concludes, but only from the persuasive appeal of the moral and political ideas linked to it.