Do austerity programs even work? Europe tried such an approach in 2008, and expressing that we did better than the US would be a lie.
Greece's austerity programs resulted in the biggest brain drain the country has ever seen, and people make peanuts.
Greece's austerity programs resulted in the biggest brain drain the country has ever seen, and people make peanuts.
Austerity works in the sense of reducing deficits and no longer digging a fiscal hole. It is something which happens eventually after a country runs out of creditors who don't demand austerity as a precondition.
Austerity does seems to perform inferior to stimulus but not everyone can afford it. Stimulus being unavailable is itself a statement of lack of faith in existing plans. Austerity is hard to screw it up in the same sense it is hard to screw up losing weight in a Gulag. Hence why lenders of last resort insist upon it as a precondition.
You're saying it's well proven that austerity programs are required for success. Your evidence is that it hasn't been tried there in 24 years.
If people felt like Greece would have been successful without austerity, they could have lent Greece money at lower rates and with less conditions than the IMF.