Austerity

Abstract

Economic austerity is defined as a decrease in government spending to reduce public deficits. The policy is prescribed by those who believe in it, even when the result is a great deal of pain - and even when it results in greater job losses and declining economic growth. The word austerity evokes suffering, gravity, bitterness, hardness, self-denial and scarcity. In its economic sense, it is designed to convey the need for the inhabitants of a country to take the bitter medicine to cure the illness of their economy, that is, to cure the recession that caused the decrease of fiscal revenues, and therefore the biggest deficit in the first place.