{"id":741,"date":"2013-07-12T17:53:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T00:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=741"},"modified":"2013-07-29T12:51:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T19:51:35","slug":"in-austerity-mark-blyth-traces-the-history-and-politics-of-a-dangerous-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"In “Austerity” Mark Blyth Traces the History and Politics of a Dangerous Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Published by Oxford<\/p><\/div>\n

Mark Blyth took a career detour to be a co-editor of The Transformation of Great American School Districts. <\/em>So it was with great anticipation that I read his new book, Austerity. <\/em>I recommend it <\/em>to educators as a valuable corrective to the belief that boosting educational standards will increase the life chances of American students and create a rocketship economy.\u00a0 For teachers, school superintendents, and education policy wonks, this book is more about you than you may think it is.<\/p>\n

Blyth considers austerity\u2014the economic policy of the United States and Europe since 2003\u2014a dangerous idea, and through tracing its history and effect he provides powerful evidence for that assertion.\u00a0 It slows, not grows the economy.\u00a0 But for poor and working class children the news is worse: they will pay for the economists\u2019 fairy tales with high unemployment and reduced social mobility.<\/p>\n

For Blyth this gets personal.\u00a0 Born and raised in relative poverty in Scotland, a welfare kid and proud of the fact, he is now a professor of political economy at Brown University, an extreme example of intergenerational mobility.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat made it possible for me to become the man I am today is the very thing now blamed for creating the crisis itself: the state, more specifically, the so-called runaway, bloated, paternalistic, out-of-control, welfare state.\u00a0 This claim doesn\u2019t pass the sniff test.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, in addition to a keen mind and knowledge that ideas drive institutions, Blyth tackled the economics of voluntary deflation as a way of fulfilling the academic\u2019s calling to be what Blyth calls \u201cthe Bul*l*hit police.\u201d\u00a0 So, reader beware, heading into the history of austerity as public policy propels one into a *hit storm.<\/p>\n

Austerity is supposed to inspire business confidence because government won\u2019t be sucking up available capital to issue debt or adding to the payments to service existing debt.\u00a0 Voting for austerity is a vote for productive investment instead of waste, and government stimulus only gets in the way, according to the dominant economic thinking.\u00a0 To which Blyth replies, \u201cThere is just one slight problem with this rendition of events: it is completely and utterly wrong, and the policy of austerity is more often than not exactly the wrong thing to do precisely because it produces the very outcomes you are trying to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the intuitive attractiveness of the idea that you cannot cure debt with more debt, <\/em>it is also true that we cannot grow when we are all trying to be austere at the same time.\u00a0 When that happens, as it is, individuals respond by taking a pay cut to keep their jobs, just as hundreds of thousands of teachers have in the United States.\u00a0 The first thing they do, of course, is cut consumption.\u00a0 They may also cut their personal debt by paying down credit card balances.\u00a0 That shrinks the economy again.<\/p>\n

Blyth takes his readers through the American and European \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d banking crisis that converted private debts and massive business failures into government debt.\u00a0 In the case of Europe these became large enough that they continue to threaten both national economies and the continued existence of the Euro.\u00a0 \u201cThe greatest bait and switch in history,\u201d Blyth calls it as he traces its history as an economic idea and how it has worked in practice.\u00a0 Not well.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with education policy?\u00a0\u00a0 In two respects, a great deal.\u00a0 First, a slow national economy hammers state budgets for schools and colleges.\u00a0 In a very real way, it has been teachers and kids who have bailed out the bankers.\u00a0\u00a0 For teachers, it\u2019s furloughs and wage give backs.\u00a0 For college students it\u2019s higher tuition and student debt.<\/p>\n

Second, austerity kills the \u201ceducation dream story,\u201d the idea that if parents can get their children to work hard in school and persist through college social mobility will result.\u00a0 While it is still true that college graduation markedly increases the chances for employment and economic self-sufficiency, it\u2019s also true that the prospects for this generation of college students is not as great as it was for their parents.\u00a0 College is a riskier investment than it used to be.<\/p>\n

When the faith in education falters, youth find other ways forward.\u00a0 In Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, unemployment rates among college educated young adults fuels political instability. \u00a0Could something larger and more potent than the Occupy movement take place in America?\u00a0 A glance at countries as diverse as Brazil, Egypt, and Sweden suggests that it could.\u00a0 Austerity could crash the very institutions it was intended to perpetuate.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Mayor’s pledge to boost summer jobs illustrates the possibility of city government and its limits. <\/strong>New Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has pledged to boost summer jobs for youth<\/a>. \u00a0It’s the right move. \u00a0The city was able to provide fewer than 4,000 jobs last summer. \u00a0But it also shows how limited this or any mayor is in wrenching the economy. \u00a0City governments, unlike the national government, have to balance their books, and during hard or show economic times have no choice but to be austere.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

See a review of Austerity<\/em> by Paul Krugman in the <\/a>New York Review of Books<\/a>, <\/em>by Lawrence Summers in the <\/a>Financial Times<\/a>, <\/em>and links to other reviews from the Watson Institute at Brown<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Blyth took a career detour to be a co-editor of The Transformation of Great American School Districts. So it was with great anticipation that I read his new book, Austerity. I recommend it to educators as a valuable corrective to the belief that boosting educational standards will increase the life chances of American students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,12,6,144,38,143,98],"tags":[146,145],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}