PLAY PODCASTS
Austerity's coming back. Here's why it never works
Season 1 · Episode 841

Austerity's coming back. Here's why it never works

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

January 25, 202330m 14s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (pdst.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

Austerity is a staple fixture of our political system. How did it become such a dominant economic policy? And is it really a ‘prudent’ and ‘realistic’ way of organising our economics? Philosopher and historian Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism joins Ahir Shah to explore how austerity came to become the water we swim in and why we can’t imagine a world without it.


  • “Austerity has become the water we swim in.” 
  • “We use very specific economic models from the 1900s, in which the worker loses agency while the entrepreneur is championed.”
  • “The purpose isn’t to ‘trickledown’, it is to incentivise those at the top.”
  • “In the US the richest 400 families pay the lowest tax.”
  • “Even Lenin had to accept austerity.” 


Support us on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast


Written and presented by Ahir Shah. Producers: Jet Gerbertson, Alex Rees. Assistant producer: Kasia Tomasiewicz. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Bunker music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Jade Bailey. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production


Instagram | Twitter

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices