In addition, with growth slowing, the goals of austerity -- that is, the reason why we're engaging in this policy -- are being pushed out:
Mr Osborne said Britain would miss its target to have debt falling by 2015-16 as a percentage of national income by a year. He also said he would need to extend austerity by another year to 2018 to close the budget deficit.
Let's think this one through. The UK has been implementing an austerity budget since roughly mid-2010. Here are the results:
Just to review:
1.) England is implementing austerity
2.) They are doing this to "clean up their government finances" in the hopes that this "cleaning up" would restore confidence in the UK economy.
3.) The "cleaning up" is leading to contracting growth, which is lowering confidence in the UK economy -- the exact opposite of what was intended from the first place
4.) So, the best plan forward is ... more austerity.
Now, I'm still in a pretty heavily medicated, post surgery situation. In my condition, the above makes no sense.
Also -- for a really good history of the UK austerity program, read this from Wikipedia.
