Who are these? Well who else! The brilliant technocrat economists! The ones setting the economy of the Eurozone right for instance. Those magnificent men… well, in their flying machines? You could describe them in such a way. After all they are completely up in the air.
They know what the problem is and they know how to solve it. The problem in Europe has too much debt and deficits that are far too large. What to do? Well, easy really. Reduce these two figures. Scale down the deficit and reduce debt. Those, after all are the problems of the economy.
So what do you do? Easy again. Well, only if you are a brilliant technocrat like Olli Rehn or Yannis Stournaras. The rest of us are too dim to really know what to do and how to do it. So we take out our big scissors and start cutting. The easy bits first. Pensions, salares, state expenses relating to welfare, you know hospitals, schools, universities or whatever else is really not necessary.
There now. If the state cuts its expenses like that, hey presto! No more deficits! But, hey wait a minute. That’s not enough. Well of course not. You have to tax far more to raise your revenue so that you can repay your debts, don’t you? Yes of course. Brilliant! Light bulb flashes in a cartoon cloud.
So you plunge into it viciously and start taxing everything, just about everything! And expect to raise revenue from those you have impoverished.
So why has none of this worked? Because our modern day wizards wear blinkers perhaps? Because they are too dim to realise that every action has a consequence? Because they are so far removed from reality that they do not realise public accounts amount to more than a cross word puzzle? Because people for them are nothing buts statistics?
Perhaps all of that and more. That they are blinded by a vicious inhuman economic dogma that forgets completely about the well being of the people because things like that do not matter to raw capitalist ideology.
In any case, for all their brilliance, the result of their policies has been an unmitigated disaster. Debt grows as a % of GDP and does not diminish when you plunge an economy into recession. When you savagely cut disposable income through cuts and too much taxation you destroy consumption, when you destroy consumption you send the economy into galloping recession.
Furthermore, you add problems to the economy in addition to making what you set out to achieve much worse. Problems such as an incredible rise in unemployment, unending recession, a rise in suicides, misery, hunger and much more.
In short, the achievements of our latter day wizards, aka Euro technocrats, can’t help reminding us of Phillip Larkin’s famous poem:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”
And the last line is perhaps the crowning achievement of the brilliant technocrats like Stournaras. He has absolutely convinced us “have no kids!” How could you under his cast iron hand?