Quotessence
Home / Topics / Austerity Quotes

Austerity Quotes

Browse 110 quotes about Austerity.

Related topics

PeopleIfsEuropeNeedsEconomicEconomyGovernment

Austerity Quotes

“There was another reason why the dollar's hegemony grew: the intentional impoverishment of America's working class. A cynic will tell you quite accurately that large quantities of money are attracted to countries where the profit rate is higher. For Wall Street to exercise fully its magnetic powers over foreign capital, profit margins in the United States had to catch up with profit rates in Germany and Japan. A quick and dirty way to do this was to suppress American wages. Cheaper labour makes for lower costs, makes for larger margins. It is no coincidence that, to this day, American working class earnings languish below their 1974 level. It is also no coincidence that union-busting became a thing in the 1970s, culminating in Ronald Reagan's dismissal of every single unionised air traffic controller. A move emulated by Margaret Thatcher in Britain who pulverised whole industries in order to eliminate the trade unions that inhabited them. And faced with the Minotaur's sucking most of the world's capital into America, the European ruling classes reckoned that they had no alternative but to do the same. Reagan had set the pace. Thatcher had shown the way. But it was in Germany and later across continental Europe that the new class war - you might call it universal austerity - was waged most effectively.”

PovertyCapitalismClass WarfareAusterity
Book:Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Create image

“Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Feed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill'd with thorns; It is eternal winter there. For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.”

PovertyAusterityChild PovertyHoly Thursday
Book:Songs of Experience
Create image

“Despite claims that these radical policy changes were driven by fiscal conservatism...the reality is that government was not reducing the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor. It was radically altering what the funds would be used for....Funding that had once been once used for public housing was being redirected to prison construction.”

PovertyRacismAusterityMass IncarcerationPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Create image

“We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.”

WantProblemDreamHumorInspirationFunnyPainMotivationSufferingQuotesStrongDifficultChallengesPovertyTroubleStrengthInspireHumourJokesHumorousDeterminationPatienceAdversityEntrepreneurMiseryPerseveranceTrialsPersistenceSatireEnduranceResolveResolutionHardshipKeep GoingNeedProblemsDreamerAphorismNever Give UpPersistDistressQuotationsAfflictionJokeStoicismHilariousChallengePersevereTenacityAphorismsMotivateDifficultiesDeprivationTribulationStubbornnessStartupStaminaStartupsStoicSufferTrials And TribulationsGive UpFirmnessHardshipsWretchednessFollow ThroughDreamersStand FirmAusterityEntrepreneursMisfortuneMental StrengthObstinacyAphoristAphoristsSteadfastnessTrialHang In ThereHold OnStaying PowerContinueNeedinessPurposefulnessCarry OnVenture CapitalistsPress OnTribulationsHang OnGo OnMentally StrongStoicsDoggednessDestitutionStay The CourseVenture CapitalistIntransigenceBe DeterminedBe PersistentKeep OnPrivationDire StraitsPenuryKeep At ItPertinacityGo The DistanceImpecuniousnessIndefatigabilityResolutenessStrength Of PurposeTirelessnessBe TenaciousHammer AwayLeave No Stone UnturnedNot Take No For An AnswerObduracyPlod OnPlug AwayPress AheadSoldier OnStand FastStaunchnessStick It OutStop At NothingStruggle OnTravails
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“Nor have I any idea why Said should consider Orwell’s life a ‘comfortable’ one. Having taken a bullet through the throat, and while suffering from a demoralising and ultimately lethal case of TB, he lived on an astonishingly low budget and tried whenever possible to grow his own food and even to make his own furniture. Indeed, if there was anything affected about him, it might be his indifference to bourgeois life, his almost ostentatious austerity.”

HardshipPretenseBourgeoisieAusterityGeorge OrwellEdward SaidAscetism
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“The human consequences of Reagan's budget cuts went deep. For instance, Social Security disability benefits were terminated for 350,000 people. A war hero of Vietnam, Roy Benavidez, who had been presented with the Congressional Medal Of Honor by Reagan, 'Was told by Social Security officials that the shrapnel pieces in his heart, arms, and leg did not prevent him from working. Appearing before a congressional committee, he denounced Reagan.”

VeteranAusterityBudgetReagan
Book:A People's History Of The United States Sm
Create image

“Forcing new loans upon the bankrupt on condition that they shrink their income is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Greece was never bailed out. With their ‘rescue’ loan and their troika of bailiffs enthusiastically slashing incomes, the EU and IMF effectively condemned Greece to a modern version of the Dickensian debtors’ prison and then threw away the key. Debtors’ prisons were ultimately abandoned because, despite their cruelty, they neither deterred the accumulation of new bad debts nor helped creditors get their money back. For capitalism to advance in the nineteenth century, the absurd notion that all debts are sacred had to be ditched and replaced with the notion of limited liability. After all, if all debts are guaranteed, why should lenders lend responsibly? And why should some debts carry a higher interest rate than other debts, reflecting the higher risk of going bad? Bankruptcy and debt write-downs became for capitalism what hell had always been for Christian dogma – unpleasant yet essential – but curiously bankruptcy-denial was revived in the twenty-first century to deal with the Greek state’s insolvency. Why? Did the EU and the IMF not realize what they were doing? They knew exactly what they were doing. Despite their meticulous propaganda, in which they insisted that they were trying to save Greece, to grant the Greek people a second chance, to help reform Greece’s chronically crooked state and so on, the world’s most powerful institutions and governments were under no illusions. […] Banks restructure the debt of stressed corporations every day, not out of philanthropy but out of enlightened self-interest. But the problem was that, now that we had accepted the EU–IMF bailout, we were no longer dealing with banks but with politicians who had lied to their parliaments to convince them to relieve the banks of Greece’s debt and take it on themselves. A debt restructuring would require them to go back to their parliaments and confess their earlier sin, something they would never do voluntarily, fearful of the repercussions. The only alternative was to continue the pretence by giving the Greek government another wad of money with which to pretend to meet its debt repayments to the EU and the IMF: a second bailout.”

DebtFinancial CrisisAusterityFinance CapitalismCapitalist BureaucracyPrivate Banking
Book:Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment
Create image

“OLYMPAS: There is one doubt. When souls attain Such an unimagined gain Shall not others mark them, wise Beyond mere mortal destinies? MARSYAS: Such are not the perfect saints. While the imagination faints Before their truth, they veil it close As amid the utmost snows The tallest peaks most straitly hide With clouds their lofty heads. Divide The planes! Be ever as you can A simple honest gentleman! Body and manners be at ease. Not bloat with blazoned sanctities! Who fights as fights the soldier-saint? And see the artist-adept paint! Weak are those souls that fear the stress Of earth upon their holiness! The fast, they eat fantastic food, They prate of beans and brotherhood, Wear sandals, and long hair, and spats, And think that makes them Arhats! How shall man still his spirit-storm? Rational Dress and Food Reform! OLYMPAS: I know such saints. MARSYAS: An easy vice: So wondrous well they advertise! O their mean souls are satisfied With wind of spiritual pride. They're all negation. "Do not eat; What poison to the soul is meat! Drink not; smoke not; deny the will! Wine and tobacco make us ill." Magic is life; the Will to Live Is one supreme Affirmative. These things that flinch from Life are worth No more to Heaven than to Earth. Affirm the everlasting Yes! OLYMPAS: Those saints at least score one success: Perfection of their priggishness! MARSYAS: Enough. The soul is subtlier fed With meditation's wine and bread. Forget their failings and our own; Fix all our thoughts on Love alone!”

AsceticismSaintsAusterityThelema1910Fakirs
Book:Aha!
Create image

“She wipes her forehead with her wrist She's just back from a double shift Esther's a carer doing nights Behind her on the kitchen wall is a black and white picture of swallows in flight Her eyes are sore her muscles ache she cracks a beer and swigs it She holds it to her thirsty lips and necks it till it's finished. It's 4:18 a.m. again. Her brain is full of all she's done that day She knows that she won't sleep a wink before the sun is on it's way. She's worried about the world tonight. She's worried all the time. She don't know how she's supposed to put it from her mind . . . - Europe is Lost”

Working ClassExhaustionAusterityTirednessCarerCare Worker
Book:Let Them Eat Chaos
Create image

“Barriers remain in place, disabling us, and denying our full participation in the everyday. The current government wallows in an ideology that crushes us with cuts to social care, to services – and to disabled arts organisations. Immediately after Silent Witness, Ellen Clifford, of Disabled People Against Cuts, was on Newsnight, pointing out that “the United Nations made a finding of grave and systemic violations towards disabled people”. Who cares? Who’s listening? Unexpectedly Silent Witness seemed to be this week. And with viewing figures averaging 6 million, let’s hope it marks a watershed moment in our understanding and acceptance of disabled people.”

DiversityEqualityActivismWriterDisabilityAusteritySilent WitnessBbconeDisabled ActorsGuardian Newspaper
Author:Penny Pepper
Create image

“As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.”

WantFirstsCountryStatesGovernmentPastGamesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesEconomyGreaterCenturyTwentiesCrisisDepthFinancialDisasterRecoveryShockMassiveChickensSteadyOddsPackagesCliffsRecessionsFinancial CrisisChasmsAusterityLooming
Author:Fareed Zakaria
Create image

“The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract.”

PeoplePoliticalSocialEconomyDemocracyDangerKillingPushingContractsThreateningPolitical SystemsLivelihoodSpiralsLegitimacyRewritingUnderminingAusteritySocial ContractDownward SpiralBackdoor
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
Create image

“[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation.”

PeopleIfsWorldNeedsTryingRealNextBeliefSoundMillionsFantasyPolicySeriousBuiltArgumentFoundationRewardsInvisibleFairyReal WorldRealismNext TimeExplainingAusterityBlightVigilante
Author:Paul Krugman
Create image

“The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it's austerity in the midst of recession and that's guaranteed to be a disaster. There's some resistance to that now. In the US, it's essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration.”

WayDifferentEuropeSuicidePopulationProductionsDisasterResistanceDifferent WaysMidstRecessionsSuperfluousIncarcerationAusterityCommitting Suicide
Author:Noam Chomsky
Create image

“In Europe there's an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe... and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It's hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession policy as anything other than attack on the social contract.”

HardStatesRememberSocialGrowthDangerousPolicyEuropeWelfareMidstContractsThreateningRecessionsXenophobiaWelfare StateRemnantsAusterityUltrasSocial Contract
Author:Noam Chomsky
Create image

“The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.”

MindFactsPastPleasureDisciplineGratitudeLaughterBirdStonesAppreciationSunsetWeedSpellsUnnoticedPurificationAusterityLife Appreciation
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“When people are running up more and more debt for housing, they call that "real wealth." It exposes what's wrong in the mainstream economics and why most of the economics that justifies austerity programs and economic shrinkage is in the textbooks is not scientific. Junk economics denies the role of debt and denies the fact that the economic system we have now is dysfunctional.”

PeopleRealFactsRunningWealthRolesEconomicProgramEconomicsDenyDebtJustifyMainstreamHousingJunkTextbooksEconomic SystemsAusterityReal WealthShrinkage
Author:Michael Hudson
Create image