&quot;As for governments, the austerity meme is class politics in disguise, and tends to lead to nasty social blowback.&quot;<p>The prevailing neo-liberal (and progressive, at least in the US) notion is that smart people &quot;understand&quot; keynesian counter-cyclical economics and only dopes or rubes ... or bad actors (as you suggest) would advocate for austerity.<p>However, it really needs to be repeated:  austerity is only braindead <i>if</i> you insist on ever-increasing aggregate demand.  If you are willing to accept stagnant or even decreasing aggregate demand (for whatever reason) then austerity is perfectly reasonable and perhaps a good choice.<p>I&#x27;m not saying I&#x27;m in that camp, but I really don&#x27;t like this false dichotomy - that austerity is braindead and only morons would advocate for it ... and leaving unsaid the almost universal assumption that aggregate demand can never, ever, be allowed to drop.<p>EDIT: and I also don&#x27;t like the condescending, custodial tone that this always takes ... &quot;oh how quaint that you would conflate a national economy with a household economy, here let me mansplain it to you&quot;.   In fact, there are boundary conditions where they behave exactly the same (see argentina).  People aren&#x27;t as dumb as you think they are.