People treat austerity as a choice, but really it's a consequence.
The west isn't the global colonizer it used to be, and so it can't just take all the materials from everywhere else and get rich on the backs of someone else, or levy a technological advantage so extreme it just crushes everyone else. That's good for the soul of the society in the long run, and it's also helped lead to the largest quality of life improvement for the most people in the history of the world.
It also means that western countries don't get to have the same quality of life as they did when they were taking advantage of everyone else. Austerity is inevitable when there just isn't as much to go around. The only question becomes, "When?"
If you just keep taking out debt you never intend to pay back as western societies have done for the past 20 years, you're not austere today, but you will have to be austere tomorrow (or worse, your kids will because you'll be dead and they'll be paying for your largesse). It sucks, but you'll always have to eventually face austerity when reality is you're not going back to Pax Britannia. That being the case, if you're austere today then it'll hurt a lot less than taking heroin to hide the pain and continuing to run as if your legs aren't broken.
In a metaphorical sense, the west went from spacial colonization, where they go out and take over another country to steal from it, to temporal colonization, where they borrow money they never intend to pay back so they can get their descendants to pay for their own largesse.
The key here is money they never intend to pay back. If countries borrowed money with an intention to pay it back using tax money within their lifetimes, then that's a different moral situation than borrowing money with the intention to never pay it back and leave the problem for future generations to take care of. That action is almost like selling someone into slavery -- They create a massive burden for their children, who never asked for it, and often the debt isn't spent on something like public goods which will be there for their children to enjoy, but something like tax cuts which solely benefit the people who receive it.
The west isn't the global colonizer it used to be, and so it can't just take all the materials from everywhere else and get rich on the backs of someone else, or levy a technological advantage so extreme it just crushes everyone else. That's good for the soul of the society in the long run, and it's also helped lead to the largest quality of life improvement for the most people in the history of the world.
It also means that western countries don't get to have the same quality of life as they did when they were taking advantage of everyone else. Austerity is inevitable when there just isn't as much to go around. The only question becomes, "When?"
If you just keep taking out debt you never intend to pay back as western societies have done for the past 20 years, you're not austere today, but you will have to be austere tomorrow (or worse, your kids will because you'll be dead and they'll be paying for your largesse). It sucks, but you'll always have to eventually face austerity when reality is you're not going back to Pax Britannia. That being the case, if you're austere today then it'll hurt a lot less than taking heroin to hide the pain and continuing to run as if your legs aren't broken.
In a metaphorical sense, the west went from spacial colonization, where they go out and take over another country to steal from it, to temporal colonization, where they borrow money they never intend to pay back so they can get their descendants to pay for their own largesse.
The key here is money they never intend to pay back. If countries borrowed money with an intention to pay it back using tax money within their lifetimes, then that's a different moral situation than borrowing money with the intention to never pay it back and leave the problem for future generations to take care of. That action is almost like selling someone into slavery -- They create a massive burden for their children, who never asked for it, and often the debt isn't spent on something like public goods which will be there for their children to enjoy, but something like tax cuts which solely benefit the people who receive it.
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