The main trouble with austerity, apart from the fact that it makes millions of ordinary people poor, puts even more money in the pockets of the uber-rich, ruins pensions, public services and conditions of service, is that it simply does not work.
In Britain we ordinary people are heaps worse off but the debt is still the same; the borrowing increasing.
It is obvious to any numbskull why. If you reduce wages of ordinary people they pay less taxes. You cannot pay off your debt; you cannot generate growth.
In order to get out of debt you have to earn enough to pay it off.
What we should have done is to make cuts of all the frivolous waste without hitting the workers.
What the Tories did, which was ideologically driven, was use austerity as an excuse to do what they love doing which is to slash public services. They gave tax hand-outs to the rich and still have not closed the tax loop-holes for corporations and the rich.
Austerity is a political excuse.
The answer is to cut the frills, stimulate growth and pay off the debt.