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Thesis Statement On Austerity

Decent Essays

Austerity in simple terms is basically a policy of making several cuts like reducing domestic wages in order to balance the budget which would remove debt and restore competitiveness within that country. “Austerity is a form of voluntary deflation in which the economy adjusts through the reduction of wages, prices and public spending to restore a country’s competitiveness, which is best achieved by cutting the state’s budget, debts and deficits” (Blyth, 2015,p.2). He gives various examples of countries that have had experiences of austerity such as Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France and America among several others. “For our purposes here, we need only note that the US economy got worse each time austerity was applied, first in 1193 and again …show more content…

The author makes the claim very early on that austerity is a dangerous idea and from the off we know that he is against this policy. In the remainder of the book Blyth continuously backs up this statement. “Austerity clearly is not working if “not working” means reducing the debt and promoting growth” (Blyth, 2015, p.4). The author claims that austerity will only lead to negative factors such as decreased economic growth and increased unemployment. Blyth also talks in his book about many examples of austerity which were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s which had been recorded as ‘success’ stories. Blyth completely disagrees with the examples he has mentioned in the late 1900s and claimed that they were actually not success stories at all. “Not because austerity is unfair, which it is, not because democracy has an inflationary bias, which it doesn’t, but because austerity simply doesn’t work” (Blyth, 2015, …show more content…

He received a PhD in political science from Columbia University in 1999 and is currently a political scientist and professor at Brown University in the United States. Mark Blyth has become one of the world’s leading writers on austerity and he has formed the opinion that the policy of austerity destroys economies all over the world. “Austerity’s continuing application may well result in the eventual breakup of the Eurozone” (Blyth, 2015, p.176). His articles have appeared in several journals such as the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics and World Politics. This book was written by Mark Blyth and was first published as an eBook by Oxford University Press on the 7th of March 2013. The novel was then later published as a paperback on the 1st of January

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