MARK BLYTH

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

The people who generated great personal wealth in the process of creating this mess [the Great Recession]—bankers and financiers who invented products like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps—are now actively eschewing any responsibility for that problem by blaming the state for their mistakes.

What Mrs. Thatcher did was to take a rather complacent and comfortable set of social institutions and arrangements, stick dynamite under them, detonate them, and not really give a damn about the casualties.

Capitalism with airbags—the type of capitalism I am a fan of.

Because of the British Welfare State …, I was never hungry…. The schools I attended were free and actually acted as ladders of mobility for those randomly given the skills in the genetic lottery of life to climb them.

Austerity is a disaster for everyone but the rich…. It’s crap, but it’s dangerous crap..

Ideas matter because they can actually alter people’s conception of their own self-interest..

Capitalism with airbags—the type of capitalism I am a fan of.

Austerity is a disaster for everyone but the rich…. It’s crap, but it’s dangerous crap..

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

Because of the British Welfare State …, I was never hungry…. The schools I attended were free and actually acted as ladders of mobility for those randomly given the skills in the genetic lottery of life to climb them.

What Mrs. Thatcher did was to take a rather complacent and comfortable set of social institutions and arrangements, stick dynamite under them, detonate them, and not really give a damn about the casualties.

Ideas matter because they can actually alter people’s conception of their own self-interest..

The people who generated great personal wealth in the process of creating this mess [the Great Recession]—bankers and financiers who invented products like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps—are now actively eschewing any responsibility for that problem by blaming the state for their mistakes.