The takeaway lesson should be “austerity does not work; don’t go there.” Unfortunately, in the land of faith-based economics, evidence does not count for much. The UK may pursue a disastrous austerity path and those of us in the United States may still have to follow the same road anyhow. But we opponents of that course all appreciate the willingness of the UK to demonstrate the foolishness of this action.
Dean Baker by way of Brad DeLong. The Great British Austerity Experiment
The thing that keeps coming to mind is that the people calling for reduced spending in a host of programs would likely be calling for those same cuts no mater what the economy looked like. So why is anyone listening to them?
