The Unassuming Economist

From a book chapter by Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra:

“‘Austerity is the calling card of neoliberalism’, wrote Lancet editor Richard Horton in 2017. We describe the austerity of US welfare ‘reforms’ of the 1990s and then identify the 2007–2008 financial crisis as the window of opportunity for austerity in Europe. In the UK, we focus specifically on effects on the health effects on low-income households, local government services, and the National Health Service—all negative, sometimes disastrously so. Both in the UK and in the US, impacts fell disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable people and regions. Effects on poverty and its sequelae were especially severe. Predictably, health inequalities in the UK increased. We conclude with a provocative description of austerity as a large-scale human experiment, analogous to the structural adjustment programmes that were used to promote neoliberalism starting in the 1980s, and with one scholar’s description of austerity in the UK as a human rights violation.”