How does austerity work

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > How does austerity work

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Raising taxes on the rich during a recession is also a form of austerity.

Are you guys gonna oppose that?

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 23:35

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 20:04

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

Not sure how that has anything to do with austerity, given that it's sort of the complete opposite of what the people championing austerity are doing.

Austerity is by definition raising taxes without increasing spending, or cutting spending without also cutting taxes.

Raising taxes on the wealthy without a corresponding raise in government spending is austerity.

I'm simply wondering if you guys are against austerity in all its forms.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 23:39

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

Raising taxes without increasing spending seems kind of pointless but it's better than cutting spending I guess?

It's not if you plan on reducing the deficit or if you plan on servicing or reducing the debt

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 23:45

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

Is that very necessary?

If you are greece then yes it probably is

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 23:50

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

It doesn't seem to be doing them very much good so far.

So let me get your position straight.

If a country is running a serious, unsustainable deficit like Greece was during the 2000s, you would be opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthy to reduce said deficit and instead keep borrowing from international creditors like Germany to finance the gap between consumption and taxation.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 23:54

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

I would suggest that "raise the tax rate on the wealthy" would make bugger all difference to Greece's debt problem.

If we grant that Greece has a tax evasion problem, as well as potentially that its economy has been hit particularly hard by the recession (as I assume that the wealthy Greek citizens didn't suddenly develop magical tax evasion powers overnight) then what is presumably needed is rather large reforms in how tax is collected, as well as finding a new economic basis for the country if its current one hasn't been able to recover.

Both of those seem like relatively expensive things which you would probably need to borrow money to fund, especially as they would both take time to implement. So reducing borrowing and just saying "we want more taxes" doesn't seem practical, as people would continue to not pay tax in the interim while public services collapse and take more of the economy with them.

The necessary thing would seem to be a sizeable capital investment in social, legislative, and economic reforms, combined with a lenient repayment plan and a maintenance of funding to services and welfare in the meantime to cover the inevitable fallout of an economic restructuring, as people will probably need retraining and to find new work.

Or you could just poo poo all over the country by offering repeated bailouts with increasingly draconian repayment plans with the end goal of loving everything up so the country falls to bits and you repossess it on the cheap, that works too I guess.

I got a feeling if I simply called it a "wealth redistribution program" instead of "austerity" a few posts ago you'd be all for it right now.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 00:11

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Voyager I posted:

Austerity, in the context we're discussing, involves attempting to close the deficit primarily by reducing government spending. The whole implication of the world 'austere' is doing without something, which isn't applicable if you aren't giving anything up.

Somebody is giving something up, in this case the rich now have to pay more taxes

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 00:43

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Voyager I posted:

By this definition, shifting towards a Scandinavian welfare state could be considered Austerity so long as the additional taxes on the wealthy outweighed the increased benefits to the poor.

If we're going to define the term so broadly that it includes literally any measures that result in a net decrease in the budget deficit then the term is essentially meaningless since it now includes a huge scope of policies and values that are often explicitly contradictory towards each other.

But that's literally what it means.

Running a fiscal deficit also involve a huge scope of policies and values that are often explicitly contradictory towards each other.

I get it that austerity is a trigger word on D&D, but the OP asked what austerity is and this is an answer.

You could oppose the current implementation of austerity too and that's valid.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 00:56

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Nevvy Z posted:

It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition is because you know that's not what people are talking about so shut the gently caress up about the dictionary.

In the exact same sense the right "knows" that fiscal deficit means giving welfare money to poor undeserving people.

Sorry that words don't mean what you hope they mean.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 02:03

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Mo_Steel posted:

Oh boy, are we at the stage where we all post definitions to suit our fancy?

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/austerity.asp

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/austerity

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/austerity

All those definitions are as good as the "financial times lexicon" definition sourced by Wikipedia. But I'm sure when the OP was asking about austerity he was wondering why massive tax increases on the wealthy in Greece haven't worked, right? After all, the line of questions he asked as follow up directly includes:

It's pretty ironic for you to say "Sorry that words don't mean what you hope they mean." though. Maybe "ironic" isn't the right word, let me grab a dictionary and find a better one:

Ahh there we go. It's pretty douchey for you to say that.

Notice how those definitions states that "reduce a budget deficit, especially by reducing expenditures" instead of "reduce a budget deficit by reducing expenditures".

Which means they don't preclude reducing the deficit through tax increases.

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6254/economics/what-is-austerity/

quote:

Austerity involves policies to reduce government spending and or higher taxes in order to try and reduce government budget deficits.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 03:44

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Mo_Steel posted:

You realize I'm mocking you for cherry picking definitions to make a worthless argument, and as a response you cherry picked not only from the definitions I linked but also went out to again cherry pick a definition, right? I'm concerned you may have missed it because I didn't spell it out plainly enough. I'll try again.

Your posts in this thread thus far are obnoxious horseshit, and I'd much prefer to read posts by people who actually have some concept of modern economy who are willing to put in effort to present meaningful data and information about austerity as a response to the Great Recession and not be bombarded by lovely one-liners from you and a handful of other posters about "yeah but what about tax increases and that's not even the definition of austerity I meant, mine is much more broad than the thread discussion ". My assumption is I'm not the only one so I hope if I cut your poo poo to the chase we won't slog through a dozen pages of your poo poo, but damned if I'm not a hypocrite for contributing to this shitheap pile more than two posts to explain to you how worthless your posts have been thus far, so I'll leave it here.

oh D&D how I've missed you

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 05:07

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

fspades posted:

Worthless pedantic arguments over the definition of words that everyone IRL understands is a time-honored tradition of D&D and one of the reasons why it's a bad sub-forum. So you might like to get off your high horse over there.

nah

The fact that certain D&Ders are like the most easily riled up group of people on the internet might be though

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 18:38

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

OwlFancier posted:

Shooting all the bankers for the past twenty years would have prevented the debt crisis.

Shooting all the people for the past twenty years would have prevented the debt crisis, global exploitation and climate change.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2015 20:13

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Pohl posted:

I gave up arguing a long time ago and just ask him how he is going to feel when his family is hanging from light poles around town. You might think I'm joking, but I'm not.

no offense dude but you probably shouldn't talk this way to people irl even if you do on the internet, it's a good way to lose friends and friends are awfully important even if they are assholes sometimes.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2015 20:17

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

down with slavery posted:

wow you're almost as much of an rear end in a top hat as he is

like the definition of a bad person who is a leech on society and does jack poo poo to earn it and yet here you are defending him

is it really that hard to accept that there are some lovely people in this world and you might have found one?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

pretty much the reason why the fringe left will stay on the fringe forever

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 11:00

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 20:04

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Pohl posted:

loving thank you, I'm done talking about this.

VitalSigns is being sarcastic

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 21:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > How does austerity work