Book review: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Blyth

^{by Mark Blyth}

^{Oxford University Press}

Albert Einstein famously said that doing the same thing over and over in the expectation of different results is the definition of madness. That observation applies to the practice of economic austerity, according to political economist Mark Blyth.

Austerity is fundamentally flawed, Blyth says. If, as in Europe, every country adopt the same spending cuts, the practice becomes self-defeating - as two ruined countries, Greece and Spain, prove. "We cannot all cut our way to growth," he writes. "Austerity is a zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again, but it just keeps coming."

The refuted, faith-based doctrine is allowed to stagger on for two reasons. First, the common-sense hunch that more debt cannot cure debt remains seductively simple. Second, austerity is a neat excuse for conservatives to cut public services and run their bugbear, the welfare state, out of town.