Hail To The Plutocrats And Their Minions Redux

Paul Krugman:

… I’m doing some more work on British austerity — the reality, and, even more important, the perception. It’s a strange story. For the most part, as we look across the advanced world, the intellectual arguments behind the great 2010 turn to austerity have collapsed — you don’t see people invoking invisible bond vigilantes to warn of imminent crisis unless you slash spending, you don’t see them invoking the confidence fairy to deny that spending cuts will hurt output. In fact, as Simon Wren-Lewis notes, you see efforts to rewrite the history and claim that nobody ever said the things they did, in fact, say to justify austerity.

…


What do we learn from that experience, again?

So the real British story is one in which the government and the news media have misrepresented the actual history both of policy and of policy debates. Academic economists aren’t fooled: they overwhelmingly disagree with the pro-austerity narrative. But the public may never hear about that.

from 4.5.13

Snapshot, Book 4 by Andy Diggle and Jock