Top 45 Austerity Quotes

I think I would say that there is absolutely no way to reconcile an austerity agenda with climate action. Our political class needs to understand that the fight against austerity and the fight for climate action are the same fight.

Pope Francis has stressed humility and austerity – a far cry, according to many, from the predecessor‘s bling and Ferragamo shoes – those were pretty entertaining. And he‘s translating all of that into a policy agenda.

Systematic social and environmental deregulation, and the economics of austerity while enriching the rich, will be the markers of Farage/Tory politics after Brexit. Singapore-on-Sea for the rich; degradation for the rest.

Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy‘s long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.

The Nationalists peddle a misplaced cultural conceit that holds that everyone south of the Solway Firth is an austerity loving Tory.

Schools unable to keep their lights on and their doors open for the full working week is just the latest bleak instalment of a long-running show. The age of austerity returns for its ninth miserable year; always in the background, the common denominator in everything from the Brexit vote to knife crime.

As austerity has drained the blood from public services, preventive services have been the first to suffer.

There is a danger for Britain as we perceive ourselves, or as we are – less wealthy, facing economic austerity – that we essentially draw back. I think there is a recoil in parts of the country, and in parts of the government actually, from the multilateral system, and I think that’s dangerous and wrong.

America should do more to fix the still-festering housing crisis and overhaul its training schemes so that high joblessness does not become entrenched. Hunkering down for austerity is not enough. The rich world needs a strategy for growth.

‘Austerity’ is a real weasel word because it’s an attempt to make something value-based and abstract out of something which, in reality, consists simply of spending cuts.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

Discovering how to spend leisure time well, especially during a time of austerity, could be as important in the effort to reduce crime as having extra police on the streets, and increasing the population of concert halls may actually help decrease the population of prisons.

The consumption of petroleum should be conserved. We need to adopt some austerity measures. The people should cooperate with us.

As a Scandinavian, I like hopelessness and the weird austerity in the hopelessness of things.

Jeremy Corbyn has proved popular with young voters in part because he has promised an end to austerity.

Small charities deserve a bigger political voice and politicians need to hear us. Many of us are working on the margins – not of the third sector, but of society. In an age of austerity, our experience and policy advice has never been more important.

Austerity need not be Europe’s fate.

When we see the banks get bailed out with seemingly no consequences while ordinary people pay the price with job and wage cuts through austerity measures, who could blame a person for wondering where the loyalties of their elected leaders really lie?

If we want to end austerity, if we want to protect jobs and livelihoods and if we want to hold multinational corporations to account, then we need to stay in the single market.

Austerity and Brexit are two sides of the same coin, like the Brexit party and the Tories.

I think it’s essential that we do more than talk about austerity measures and cutting.

Until people realise benefits doesn’t mean scrounger, and austerity isn’t a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there’s still a lot of work to do.

Indebted countries can only grow out of their debt troubles through strong economic growth; austerity measures alone cannot work. It is imperative to engage in deep structural reform to spur growth.

Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It’s not going to happen in the United States, and it’s not going to happen in Europe.

The U.K. and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity in the short term, is the way to produce real growth. It is not. You’ve got to spend money.

I have dealt with a pretty interesting mix of young people, many of whom have never been involved in any form of politics at any level who are interested in alternatives to austerity and debt, and older people who left the Labour party, mainly over Iraq, who are coming back in.

Food is a weapon in austerity Britain. Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.

Having done a Dogme film taught me the beauty of simplicity and austerity.

Our problem in the 2015 general election was that for all the good stuff that was in the Labour manifesto, we were still going to be freezing public sector wages, cutting council expenditure, laying off civil servants. We were offering ‘austerity light‘ instead of a real alternative.

I want to end austerity.

The task ahead of us will be extremely challenging as the Tory party continue with their austerity agenda and as we continue to resolve the issues of the past and build unity, reconciliation, and equality.

Neoliberalism is hard to define. It could refer to intensified resource extraction, financialization, austerity, or something more ephemeral – a way of life – in which collective ideals of citizenship give way to marketized individualism and consumerism.

Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us.

Austerity has led us to a terrible philosophy where we think we’ve got to cut back on everything that’s ‘frippery’, like the arts.

Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean their living standards are slashed through enforced austerity or their taxes are used to bail out governments on the other side of the continent.

Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.

Sinn Fein will not do Tory austerity.

The majority of the public are experiencing the impact of Tory austerity on their public services, from longer waiting times for operations to a lack of visible community policing.

Bond investors want growth much like equity investors, and to the extent that too much austerity leads to recession or stagnation then credit spreads widen out – even if a country can print its own currency and write its own cheques.

Since the crash of 2008 and during the neoliberal retrenchment known as austerity, many commentators have muttered that the left is dead, watching social democrats in their timidity lose elections and respond by becoming ever more timid and neoliberal. They deserve their defeats.

Austerity policy without currency devaluation can only hamper economic growth.

In the U.S. the powerful critics of austerity such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich rightly identify the decline of ‘labor‘ as a problem, and renewing trade unionism part of the solution. Our opportunity is to make the same case in the UK.

Instead of an end to austerity, Labour has made clear that it wants to impose more austerity cuts.

When, in 2015, Greece decided by referendum to reject Brussels‘ austerity plans, the European Union‘s antidemocratic response took no one by surprise: To deny the people’s will had become a habit.