Ok, austerity bad, but the alternative isn't better. Either way it's the 'little man' who ends up paying through the nose. The article mentions how war time ec

Ok, austerity bad, but the alternative isn't better. Either way it's the 'little man' who ends up paying through the nose. The article mentions how war time economy is evidence how the society can do whatever it wants, and implies this should be done during peace time too. And then later in the article mentions how war time leaves the economy heavily indebted. So you can do the same during peace time - take on as much debt as needed to do everything. The issue with this approach is that this increases the money supply, effectively debasing the currency. Due to the Cantillon effect, the first people to use the new money will be able to spend it at 'old value', while people further down the line will get less and less value out of it. If you're wealthy enough, you can short the currency by taking out debt, and buying assets. If the assets are yield bearing (dividend, rent), your income automatically adjusts for increased money supply. If you depend on your wage, tough luck, wages are last to adjust, so you just keep silently getting poorer. So there's no free lunch. Either explicitly or implicitly, the poorest pay the most. I don't think that's a predicament though. It's just that the answer likely doesn't lie in the extremes. A prudent enough government should be able to navigate this by not devaluating the currency too much, yet also taking on reasonable amounts of debt to fund the functions with the highest ROI.