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> the paper that introduced austerity to the world This is complete nonsense. The paper was published in 2010. The principle of fiscal austerity for EU member

> the paper that introduced austerity to the world This is complete nonsense. The paper was published in 2010. The principle of fiscal austerity for EU member states was enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (Article 104) and the accompanying Protocol No 20 on the excessive deficit procedure. [1] > The reference values referred to in Article 104(2) of this Treaty are: > — 3 % for the ratio of the planned or actual government deficit to gross domestic product at market prices; > — 60 % for the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product at market prices. In fact R&R cite the Maastricht Treaty as the source of the 60% magic number in their paper! These numbers were basically pulled out of thin air by a French civil servant in 1981. [2] That is how government policy is actually decided. Not based on an academic paper published 20–30 years after the fact. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/tec_1997/oj [2] https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-story-of-3-deficit-limit.html https://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-archives-st...

light_hue_1 3y ago
You have just enough knowledge to completely misread and misunderstand EU treaties. And, to be rude about it. These are not hard ceilings. God does not descent from the heavens and smite your country when you go over them. Virtually every EU country has gone over these ceilings routinely. Germany is above the 3% mark right now, and has routinely exceeded it! Heck, the average deficit to GDP ratio in the EU is above 3! https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-21042023-ap https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... These are aspirations to be applied as needed, not a proscription for austerity. The behavior of the ECB, the European Central Bank, is what matters. And that's a political and economic decision made with essentially a free hand (given that it has only one legal goal). Austerity is an economic and political choice. No mechanism in the EU forces it.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  Neutral party here, after reviewing the thread: I read it as an argument for a causal chain of 2 professors => paper => Greece elects far right. A few problems with this: 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. [1] To wit, that's why the Greece stuff took O(years) to resolve. To wit, recently, it was shared that Merkle _broke down crying_ when she felt she was being bullied into enabling violations of it. n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it.
  - light_hue_1 3y ago
    Just because I didn't point out every detail that was wrong with that post doesn't mean anything else is right. Even the basic facts are wrong. > 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. This just isn't true. The Greek crisis started in 2009, the paper came out in Jan 2010, harsh austerity measures were imposed on Greece in May 2010 by the EC/ECB and then they just kept coming for years on end. The timeline works perfectly and the EC/ECB had not imposed such measures before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis > 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] > > 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. Let's talk about 2 and 3 at the same time. This just isn't how the EU works. And it isn't how laws work. Laws don't rely on a strict interpretation of a text. Laws are not computer programs. When someone says something is a "rule", they mean that it is a principle that must be followed "one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere." The 3% is not a rule. The EC does not see it as such. The member governments who routinely go over the 3% level don't see it as such. It's misleading to call it a rule. If you really want to know how it works, you could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixpack_(EU_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixpack_(EU_law) The Stability and Growth Pact (SPG) is the official mechanism for dealing with this. At the moment the SPG is suspended wholesale. Never in its history has the SPG ever imposed sanctions on any country for violating the 3% deficit to GDP ratio. It would be unthinkable for it to do so. Germany and a few other countries have been trying to reform the system for a long time to give the SPG teeth and turn that 3% level into an actual rule, but without any success. These are not rules. If you want to call them that, you're misleading yourself and any reader. > 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. I said that austerity led to the far right getting elected into parliament. Which Golden Dawn did, and far right parties continue to win seats even today at lower levels. I'm not sure what this argues? That Greece is not a fascist state today? I never said that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(Greece) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(Greece) > n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it. I never said they created austerity. On a personal note, I find the contempt for facts and scholarship on HN quite amazing. All of this information is available on Wikipedia. From the timeline, to the fact that the EU does not consider this a binding rule, to Golden Dawn getting elected as a consequence of austerity. To the fact that I'm not "internally defining" austerity, it's an actual field of study in economics. "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here ~> On this we agree. Curiosity would involve a quest to find out what the truth is.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  This is about like saying "associativity is a choice when doing mathematics." Austerity is simple math. When you borrow too much, you get squeezed later. Unless you subscribe to Magical Monetary Thinking.
casey2 3y ago
It's fairly common for people at prestigious institutions to write papers about stuff that already existed for years to try and snatch some points, and then to get all the credit, because they are from a prestigious institution with many press related megaphones. The most famous example is probably Von Neumann writing about ENIAC a project he wasn't involved with at all.

light_hue_1 3y ago

You have just enough knowledge to completely misread and misunderstand EU treaties. And, to be rude about it. These are not hard ceilings. God does not descent from the heavens and smite your country when you go over them. Virtually every EU country has gone over these ceilings routinely. Germany is above the 3% mark right now, and has routinely exceeded it! Heck, the average deficit to GDP ratio in the EU is above 3! https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-21042023-ap https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... These are aspirations to be applied as needed, not a proscription for austerity. The behavior of the ECB, the European Central Bank, is what matters. And that's a political and economic decision made with essentially a free hand (given that it has only one legal goal). Austerity is an economic and political choice. No mechanism in the EU forces it.

refulgentis 3y ago
Neutral party here, after reviewing the thread: I read it as an argument for a causal chain of 2 professors => paper => Greece elects far right. A few problems with this: 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. [1] To wit, that's why the Greece stuff took O(years) to resolve. To wit, recently, it was shared that Merkle _broke down crying_ when she felt she was being bullied into enabling violations of it. n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Just because I didn't point out every detail that was wrong with that post doesn't mean anything else is right. Even the basic facts are wrong. > 1. Paper came far after the idea of cutting government spending, so causation is wrong off the bat, as OP gently pointed out. This just isn't true. The Greek crisis started in 2009, the paper came out in Jan 2010, harsh austerity measures were imposed on Greece in May 2010 by the EC/ECB and then they just kept coming for years on end. The timeline works perfectly and the EC/ECB had not imposed such measures before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis > 2. The aspect of the treaty doesn't have a clear enforcement mechanism, yes. However, it was a major part of many countries actions at the time.[1] > > 3. "What are they going to do, kick me out?" doesn't obviate rules without a clear enforcement mechanism. Let's talk about 2 and 3 at the same time. This just isn't how the EU works. And it isn't how laws work. Laws don't rely on a strict interpretation of a text. Laws are not computer programs. When someone says something is a "rule", they mean that it is a principle that must be followed "one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere." The 3% is not a rule. The EC does not see it as such. The member governments who routinely go over the 3% level don't see it as such. It's misleading to call it a rule. If you really want to know how it works, you could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixpack_(EU_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixpack_(EU_law) The Stability and Growth Pact (SPG) is the official mechanism for dealing with this. At the moment the SPG is suspended wholesale. Never in its history has the SPG ever imposed sanctions on any country for violating the 3% deficit to GDP ratio. It would be unthinkable for it to do so. Germany and a few other countries have been trying to reform the system for a long time to give the SPG teeth and turn that 3% level into an actual rule, but without any success. These are not rules. If you want to call them that, you're misleading yourself and any reader. > 4. It's unclear why Greece electing a far right party at some point in the 2010s is enough to motivate the argument, it has a liberal technocratic government and has turned things around substantially, in fact, recent elections delivered an unexpectedly wide reelection victory. I said that austerity led to the far right getting elected into parliament. Which Golden Dawn did, and far right parties continue to win seats even today at lower levels. I'm not sure what this argues? That Greece is not a fascist state today? I never said that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(Greece) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(Greece) > n.b. On a personal note, I found the tone you're adopting surprising and not the conduct I'm familiar with after 14 years on HN. What stood out was making personal attacks in response to innocuous comments by interluctors, and the aggressive insistence that they don't understand -- dang has a wonderful shibboleth, "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here. I see someone berating other people for engaging at all because it feels like they're questioning you. If it's the case you are 100% wedded to the idea two Harvard professors created "austerity", it's not worth saying anything at all, it's ill-defined and there's a 1000 ways to read "austerity", 999 of them may conflict with however you are internally defining it. I never said they created austerity. On a personal note, I find the contempt for facts and scholarship on HN quite amazing. All of this information is available on Wikipedia. From the timeline, to the fact that the EU does not consider this a binding rule, to Golden Dawn getting elected as a consequence of austerity. To the fact that I'm not "internally defining" austerity, it's an actual field of study in economics. "come with curiosity", and I don't see that here ~> On this we agree. Curiosity would involve a quest to find out what the truth is.
AlbertCory 3y ago
This is about like saying "associativity is a choice when doing mathematics." Austerity is simple math. When you borrow too much, you get squeezed later. Unless you subscribe to Magical Monetary Thinking.

casey2 3y ago

It's fairly common for people at prestigious institutions to write papers about stuff that already existed for years to try and snatch some points, and then to get all the credit, because they are from a prestigious institution with many press related megaphones. The most famous example is probably Von Neumann writing about ENIAC a project he wasn't involved with at all.