Austerity Mode...

EPYGRAPH:

"Walking outside feelings they hide
Putting their pride through well known places
Stepping on stars and shining on cars
Passing by their heads are high
But their hearts are low down dragging as they go
Reaching out to those other faces"
- The song by Harriet Schock (1941 - ), an American singer, songwriter, teacher, author, and actress, "Hollywood Town", 1974.

***

A dim empty road...
Pretending October...
It feels like much sober...
Austeritu mode...
 
Forgotten the Code...
Less lights - fewer kisses
For someone, - who misses
A hell-soaring throat...

A fur-collar-coat,
The road has grown misty,
All sounds - have turned mystic
To scream a mad toad!...

No visits, no vote,
Less fight, fewer faces...
October embraces
Austerity mode...

***

October 20, 2005, Verbilky Station, Moscow REgion. RuSSia.

***

THE NOTES BY THE AUTHOR:

[1]. AUSTERITY  - Is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both.[1][2][3] Austerity measures are often used by governments that find it difficult to borrow or meet their existing obligations to pay back loans. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures. This reduces the amount of borrowing required and may also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies and make borrowing easier or cheaper as a result.

In most macroeconomic models, austerity policies which reduce government spending lead to increased unemployment in the short term.[4][5] These reductions in employment usually occur directly in the public sector and indirectly in the private sector. Where austerity policies are enacted using tax increases, these can reduce consumption by cutting household disposable income. This also tends to reduce employment in the short term. Reduced government spending can reduce GDP growth in the short term as government expenditure is itself a component of GDP. In the longer term, reduced government spending can reduce GDP growth if, for example, cuts to education spending leave a country's workforce less able to do high-skilled jobs or if cuts to infrastructure investment impose greater costs on business than they saved through lower taxes. In both cases, if reduced government spending leads to reduced GDP growth, austerity may lead to a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than the alternative of the government running a higher budget deficit. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, for instance, austerity measures in many European countries were followed by rising unemployment and slower GDP growth. The result was increased debt-to-GDP ratios despite reductions in budget deficits.[6]

In some cases, particularly when the output gap is low, austerity can have the opposite effect and stimulate economic growth. For example, when an economy is operating at or near capacity, higher short-term deficit spending (stimulus) can cause interest rates to rise, resulting in a reduction in private investment, which in turn reduces economic growth. Where there is excess capacity, the stimulus can result in an increase in employment and output.[7][8] Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero, and Francesco Giavazzi argue that austerity can be expansionary in situations where government reduction in spending is offset by greater increases in aggregate demand (private consumption, private investment and exports).

CONTROVERSY
Austerity protest in Athens, 2011
Austerity programs can be controversial. In the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) briefing paper "The IMF and the Third World", the ODI addresses five major complaints against the IMF's austerity conditions. Complaints include such measures being "anti-developmental", "self-defeating", and tending "to have an adverse impact on the poorest segments of the population".

In many situations, austerity programs are implemented by countries that were previously under dictatorial regimes, leading to criticism that citizens are forced to repay the debts of their oppressors.[87][88][89]

In 2009, 2010, and 2011, workers and students in Greece and other European countries demonstrated against cuts to pensions, public services, and education spending as a result of government austerity measures.[90][91]

Following the announcement of plans to introduce austerity measures in Greece, massive demonstrations occurred throughout the country aimed at pressing parliamentarians to vote against the austerity package. In Athens alone, 19 arrests were made, while 46 civilians and 38 policemen had been injured by 29 June 2011. The third round of austerity was approved by the Greek parliament on 12 February 2012 and met strong opposition, especially in Athens and Thessaloniki, where police clashed with demonstrators.


In October 2012, the IMF announced that its forecasts for countries that implemented austerity programs have been consistently overoptimistic, suggesting that tax hikes and spending cuts have been doing more damage than expected and that countries that implemented fiscal stimulus, such as Germany and Austria, did better than expected.[20] These data have been scrutinized by the Financial Times, which found no significant trends when outliers like Germany and Greece were excluded. Determining the multipliers used in the research to achieve the results found by the IMF was also described as an "exercise in futility" by Professor Carlos Vegh of the University of Michigan.[93] Moreover, Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley and Kevin H. O'Rourke of Oxford University write that the IMF's new estimate of the extent to which austerity restricts growth was much lower than historical data suggest.[94]

On 3 February 2015, Joseph Stiglitz wrote: "Austerity had failed repeatedly from its early use under US president Herbert Hoover, which turned the stock-market crash into the Great Depression, to the IMF programs imposed on East Asia and Latin America in recent decades. And yet when Greece got into trouble, it was tried again."[95] Government spending actually rose significantly under Hoover, while revenues were flat.[96]

According to a 2020 study, which used survey experiments in the UK, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, voters strongly disapprove of austerity measures, in particular spending cuts. Voters disapprove of fiscal deficits but not as strongly as austerity.
CRITICISM
According to economist David Stuckler and physician Sanjay Basu in their study The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, a health crisis is being triggered by austerity policies, including up to 10,000 additional suicides that have occurred across Europe and the U.S. since the introduction of austerity programs.[122]

Much of the acceptance of austerity in the general public has centred on the way debate has been framed, and relates to an issue with representative democracy; since the public do not have widely available access to the latest economic research, which is highly critical of economic retrenchment in times of crisis, the public must rely on which politician sounds most plausible.[123] This can unfortunately lead to authoritative leaders pursuing policies which make little, if any, economic sense.

According to a 2020 study, austerity does not pay off in terms of reducing the default premium in situations of severe fiscal stress. Rather, austerity increases the default premium. However, in situations of low fiscal stress, austerity does reduce the default premium. The study also found that increases in government consumption had no substantial impact on the default premium.

ALTERNATIVES OF AUSTERITY
A number of alternative plans have been used and proposed as an alternative to implementing austerity measures, examples include:

Infrastructure-based development
New Deal (a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939 in response to the Great Depression in the United States).
Alternatives to implementing austerity measures may utilise increased government borrowing in the short-term (such as for use in infrastructure development and public work projects) to attempt to achieve long-term economic growth.
- Source: Wikipedia.com: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity#Europe.
[2].
[3].
[4].

SYNONYMES:
monastique
asc;tique
hieromonk
s;v;re
minish
spartiate
persistant
Setroy
;glise
romain
catholique
profond;ment religieux
ermite
dinoky
isol;
solitaire
insociable
d;sert
anachor;te
;conomique
simple
calculateur
prudent
mod;rer
Modeste
Pratique
Avec une calculatrice
Chaque centime compte
Calcul; avec pr;cision
Restreint
Seuil de rentabilit;
Budget

ENGLISH SYNONYMS:
monastic
ascetic
hieromonk
strict
minish
Spartan
persistent
Setroy
church
Roman
Catholic
deeply

religious
hermit
dinoky
isolated
solitary
unsociable
desert
anchorite
economic
simple
calculator
careful
moderate

Modest
Convenient
With a calculator
Every penny counts
Accurately calculated
Restricted
Break even
Budget