Vaikka en demareita kannatakaan, niin tämä Orpon lausahdus oli kyllä loistava esimerkki siitä, minkälaiseen järjettömään kusetukseen oikeistolainen ideologia nojaa, kun ottaa huomioon millä kiimalla oikeisto niitä julkisia palveluita on tässä 20 vuoden aikana tuhonnut.

Oikeistolainen “niukkuuspolitiikka” ei vaikuta ikinä johtavan niihin väitettyihin lopputuloksiin, vaan tulokset ovat käytännössä päinvastaiset:

Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters’ support for extreme parties by showing that austerity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages. Austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment.

Lähde: The Political Costs of Austerity,

Our assessment of the agenda is confined to the effects of two policies: removing restrictions on the movement of capital across a country’s borders (so-called capital account liberalization); and fiscal consolidation, sometimes called “austerity,” which is shorthand for policies to reduce fiscal deficits and debt levels. An assessment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions:

•The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.­

•The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.­

•Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.­

Lähde: Neoliberalism: Oversold?

Tulee pakostakin mieleen Stafford Beerin lausahdus että “there is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do”, ja että järjestelmän tarkoitus on se, mitä se tekee