Paul Krugman se sprašuje, kdo od resnih ekonomistov sploh podpira politiko varčevanja. Pri tem s pojmom “resni” ne uporablja istega kriterija, kot se uporablja pri nas. Pri nas so naziv “resni ekonomisti” pridobili jasno levo ideološko profilirani ekonomisti s prazno bibliografijo. Njihova prednost je ideologija, vendar pa njihove (skromne ali nikakršne) reference ne podpirajo njihovega javnega renomeja. Krugman je kot resne ekonomiste opredelil tiste z ustrezno bibliografijo in citati.

… which prominent economists are now making the best case for fiscal austerity? It’s a tough question to answer, because at this point it’s hard to find any prominent economists making that case. … the question is which economists with big reputations and large citation indexes are making the austerian case.

…

And the answer is, it’s hard to think of any. Alberto Alesina, once the guru of expansionary austerity, is still defending his earlier research, but not playing a major role in current policy debate. Reinhart and Rogoff, whose 90-percent cliff was once gospel, are defending their professional reputations while trying to move on, but aren’t lending their voices to calls for continuing austerity. Who’s left?

Yes, you can find economists at right-wing think tanks and some international organizations making the austerian case, but again, I’m talking about economists with big independent reputations, justified or not. And I can’t think of any. That wing of austerianism has simply dissolved.

Vir: Paul Krugman

Ne glede na to se zgodba politike varčevanja, čeprav brez intelektualne podpore v vrstah ekonomistov, v EU nadaljuje z nezmanjšano močjo. Merklova veliko zmago na parlamentarnih volitvah po pričakovanju interpretira kot podporo volilcev njeni dosedanji politiki, natančneje: “Smer evropske politike se ne bo spremenila.” … “Volilni rezultat kaže, da so volivci dali jasen mandat, da je treba biti odgovoren pri uresničevanju interesov Nemčije v Evropi in svetu, pa tudi jasen mandat za enotno Evropo.” (Finance).

Jasno, Nemčija uresničuje svoje lastne interese. Interese nemškega gospodarstva. Ki pa niso tudi interesi ostalih držav. Tako kot republikanci v ZDA, ki z vsemi sredstvi branijo davčne olajšave za premožne, hkrati pa so prejšnji teden izglasovali zmanjšanje programa SNAP – programa socialnih pomoči za najrevnejše.

In prav zato pri desničarjih gre – za ideološko “zmanjšanje obsega držav”, torej zmanjšanje javnih izdatkov za socialne transferje, pa čeprav ima to lahko kratkoročno negativne učinke na gospodarsko rast. Kriza je po njihovem pravi trenutek za takšne reze, kajti v dobrih časih za to ni interesa. Kot pravi Jeremy Warner v Daily Telegraphu:

The bottom line is that you can only really make serious inroads into the size of the state during an economic crisis. This may be pro-cyclical, but there is never any appetite for it in the good times; it can only be done in the bad.

Seveda pa je ključna razlika med tem ali v krizi zgolj začasno zmanjšaš javne izdatke za socialo (da bi zmanjšal proračunski deficit) ali pa gre za trajno zmanjšanje javnih izdatkov za socialo. Zadnje se zdi končni cilj desničarjev. Pri tem pa so, kot pravi Simon Wren-Lewis spretno izkoristili trenutek krize in iz petnih žil potegnili nekakšne “argumente” o “proračunskih rezih z ekspanzijskimi učinki na rast” (ki so se kasneje izkazali kot napaka v izračunih):

Reducing the size of the state temporarily to reduce debt, and reducing it permanently are rather different things. There is apparently no appetite for the latter, so why not push for the former as a way of achieving the latter? As a political ruse it sounds very clever, and it is currently working in the Eurozone, US and UK. But it remains a ruse: a giant deception played on electorates across the globe.

So no wonder Jeremy Warner is tired of the austerity debate. As he says “if you attempt to rip big chunks of government demand out of the economy, it is bound to have negative short term consequences.” Seeing the government you support trying to avoid making this admission must be painful. It would have been much more honest to say that the loss of output was worth it for the long term benefits that a small state would (allegedly) bring, but that is not the argument that governments are making – instead it was all about a ‘debt crisis’. This becomes even more painful when the intellectual basis for the debt crisis argument falls away.

Da ne bo nesporazuma, jaz nisem niti za niti proti “veliki” ali “majhni državi”. Sicer podpiram ustrezno raven socialne države kot nujne socialne infrastrukture, ki omogoča čim bolj enake štartne pogoje življenja in dela vsem. Predvsem pa sem v tej debati pragmatik, saj v krizi povpraševanja, v kateri se zdaj nahajamo, rezanje državnih izdatkov krizo samo še poglablja. In za razumevanje tega res ni treba biti kvantni fizik.