Mark Blyth on Austerity

A Watson Institute video on the global trend toward Austerity budgets featuring Mark Blyth.
Directed by Joe Posner.

Produced by

Mark Blyth is a professor of International Political Economy at Brown University and faculty fellow at its Watson Institute for International Studies. He is writing "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2011.

[farseer]

So 10 years on and this still seems incredibly relevant.

[beasbadges]

Well said, "workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains"

[cptsky]

Dr. Blyth, brilliant, well done. Great explanation. I'll send this on.

[jackintheboag]

Let Me explain.
Austerity = Taking money out of the economy.
Spending = Putting money into the economy

[Alissa]

This is a very clear and convincing account of why and how austerity is dangerous. I appreciate if you could allow me to put this video with Japanese subtitles on YouTube.

[ThePigeonBrain]

Oh my god. This makes me realize what I was actually hearing in the radio following the crisis. "Nedskæringer, nedskæringer"... they were playing us for fools.

[judyhoover]

Best economic explanation that I have ever seen!  t's obvious that we have to turn around the tax loopholes for the rich.  Maybe not back to Eisenhower levels, but somewhere in-between

[NoShiiitSherlock]

What an incredible breakdown.

Marl Blyth is my PATRONUS

[ajaxcatch]

we  love you Mark. We  need you in Australia. Please come here and start a new political party.

[JohnDoe-zutz]

Austerity Farmer: Oh no, the soil is depleted! I'll just sell my tractor and cows to cover costs until the soil recovers.

Keynesian Farmer: Oh no! The soil is depleted! I'll take out a quick loan to buy some fertilizer, and use my profits to pay the bank back.

Socialist Farmer: Oh no! The soil is depleted. Maybe I shouldn't exploit the soil this much. I'll cooperate with my fellow farmers to help get through this.

Fascist Farmer: Oh no! The soil is depleted! I'll just rally my farm hands, and have then take some farm land next door for me.

[SFLawyer]

Great video & so easy to understand that even politicians can understand.

[andrewv]

This aged very well. Austerity proved to be a disaster. Yet I fear that with recessions looming in 2022 and going into 2023, the UK and other governments are going to repeat these same mistakes. Like the BS sandwich that keeps on giving, screwing the poorest in our societies and increasing inequality.

[reecedrystek]

This is basically Keynesian Economics, their are two ways to to reel in the debt, borrow money so that you can earn more revenue, or cut expense. Politicians are basically saying that there is no way for them to raise more revenue, so they must cut expenses. Mark is saying that, no you can still raise revenue. This is a very simplistic analogy, but the main kicker is that everyone is going to be paying no matter what because in the end the bankers made off with all the cash.

[skipsteel]

The Irony abounds as we are on the precipice of a new cycle of the same thing.

[johnchristmas]

Great video!  I am just starting the book today.  I see this video is more from a UK/USA perspective, about governments that spend most money on services.  My interest is more in Eastern Europe, where governments spend half on services and give half to corrupt oligarchs.  "Austerity" in Eastern Europe (so far) means cutting the services without cutting the oligarch gifts.

[tubsymcghee]

Austerity policies a new study suggests has caused 120, 000 deaths.

The paper found that there were 45, 000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200, 000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year.

The paper identified that mortality rates in the UK had declined steadily from 2001 to 2010, but this reversed sharply with the death rate growing again after austerity came in. From this reversal the authors identified that 45, 368 extra deaths occurred between 2010 and 2014, than would have been expected, although it stops short of calling them "avoidable".
Based on those trends it predicted the next five years - from 2015 to 2020 - would account for 152, 141 deaths - 100 a day - findings which one of the authors likened to “economic murder”.

The study, published in BMJ Open today, estimated that to return death rates to their pre-2010 levels spending would need to increase by £25.3bn.

Per capita public health spending between 2001 and 2010 increased by 3.8 per cent a year, but in the first four years of the Coalition, increases were just 0.41 per cent, researchers from University College London found. In social care the annual budget increase collapsed from 2.20 per cent annually, to a decrease of 1.57 per cent. The researchers found this coincided with death rates which had decreased by around 0.77 per cent a year to 2010, beginning to increase again by 0.87 per cent a year. And the majority of those were people reliant on social care, the paper says: “This is most likely because social care experienced greater relative spending constraints than healthcare."

It also notes that a drop in nurse numbers may have accounted for 10 per cent of deaths, concluding: "We have found that spending constraints since 2010, especially public expenditure on social care, may have produced a substantial mortality gap in England.”

The papers’ senior author and a researcher at UCL, Dr Ben Maruthappu, said this trend is seen elsewhere. “When you look at Portugal and other countries that have gone through austerity measures, they have found that health care provision gets worse and health care outcomes get worse, ” he told The Independent.

One of his co-author’s, Professor Lawrence King of the Applied Health Research Unit at Cambridge University, said "It is now very clear that austerity does not promote growth or reduce deficits - it is bad economics, but good class politics, " he said. "This study shows it is also a public health disaster. It is not an exaggeration to call it economic murder.”

[detectiveofmoneypolitics]

Economic investigator Frank G Melbourne Australia is following this informative content cheers Frank 😊

[AmericanNohbuddy]

>Where austerity takes the money to

Into the pockets of corporations. They just sit on the cash.

>Money is not value

We give it value.

[ManuTheGreat]

Published in September 2010 ... I wish I had seen this video back then (I had never heard of Mark Blyth.).

[mrAnderson]

good video. i would just like to add that governments that issue their own currency never need to borrow in order to spend.