Mike riffs off Simon Wren-Lewis and Paul Krugman on an explanation of austerity and continues to wilhelm Reich on the origin of authoritarianism in sexual repression.
What I think is pretty indubitable is that the austerity syndrome is psychological rather than based on economic analysis. The simple behavior fact is that "animal spirits" run high in booms and low in busts. This is reflected economically and financial as risk appetite in expansionary periods and risk adversity in contractionary ones. This attitude is transferred emotionally across the spectrum, and its manifestation is liberality at tops and austerity at bottoms. Transference also affects attitudes toward government and policy.
Both are forms of irrationality that affect expectations and get transferred to economic behavior as spending at tops and saving at bottoms. By transference, the same behavior gets projected on government policy, even though the economic reality is that the public and private sectors stand in inverse relationship financially.
Monetary Realism
The Mass Psychology of Austerity
Michael Sankowski
I dont know about this child psychology stuff here... but I would submit that with the metal lovers out there this is some weird-o-rama somewhat sexual attraction they develop towards the "precious" metals imo....
ReplyDeleteHuman beings’ innate desire for a religion my be relevant – and all religions involve sacrifice (e.g. human sacrifice in the central American Aztec religion prior to the arrival of Europeans). Put another way, if something is wrong, that proves some god must be placated with offerings and sacrifices.
ReplyDeleteBut Ralph, in Biblical cases at least where God required a sacrifice, at least the humans were then allowed to communally eat the livestock/feedstock that made up the offering... which is "anti-austerity"...
ReplyDeleteGranted there is much evidence of other forms of sacrifice that went on to include "human sacrifice" in other pagan cultures...
But the Biblical (ie non-pagan) forms of sacrifice included communal consumption of this part of the surplus that comprised the offering/sacrifice...
So 'austerity' is imo a very pagan practice at core, granted there is no direct extermination of human flesh involved but one could easily project that human death does eventually follow from it...
rsp,
"13 And a voice came to him, "Rise, Peter! Sacrifice and eat!"
ReplyDelete14 Yet Peter said, "Far be it from me, Lord, for I never ate anything contaminating and unclean!" Acts 10:13
They would just eat what was sacrificed anyway ... no economic hardship was created by God demanding a "sacrifice"... austerity is completely a wild pagan type practice...
rsp,