The anti-austerity movement refers to the mobilisation of street protests and grassroots campaigns that has happened across various countries, especially in Europe, since the onset of the worldwide Great Recession. Anti-austerity actions are varied and ongoing, and can be either sporadic and loosely organised or longer-term and tightly organised. They continue as of the present day. The global Occupy movement has arguably been the most noticeable physical enactment of anti-austerity and populist sentiment.

Political impact

Since the onset of the economic recession in Europe, the political establishment response has increasingly focused on austerity: attempts to bring down budget deficits and control the rise of debt. The anti-austerity movement has responded by giving rise to a wave of anti-establishment political parties. Opposition to austerity is seen as the force behind the rise of Podemos in Spain, Italy's Five Star Movement and the Syriza party in Greece. Ahead of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the Scottish Government pledged to end austerity in an independent Scotland. Economist Thomas Piketty welcomed the political reaction to austerity, saying the rise of anti-austerity parties is "good news for Europe". According to Piketty, European countries tried to get rid of their deficits too quickly, resulting in a situation where "their citizens have suffered the consequences in the shape of austerity policies. It's good to reduce deficits, but at a rate that's commensurate with growth and economic recovery, but here growth has been killed off."

Examples

Perspectives

Some economists, like Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman, argue that austerity measures tend to be counterproductive when applied to the populations and programs they are usually applied to. The fact that the political sphere has been so heavily influenced by a paper known as "Growth in a Time of Debt" based on flawed methodology has led Krugman to argue: "What the Reinhart–Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But 'economic research' showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to." In October 2012, the International Monetary Fund announced that its forecasts for countries which implemented austerity programs have been consistently overoptimistic.