The way to compete against Excel is actually learning to love the tool (it took me 2 years, but I almost can say I love it... sometimes).
EDIT Since I am on HN, I always try to have a serious discussion about Excel and business software. That's why I always try to tie this kind of topic to my general idea: that we need to understand very well the type of work people do in Excel before proposing any solution.
But... if we want to talk about austerity, let's talk.
What is the real problem with anti-austerity measures today? We could accept a GDP/Debt ratio of 200, 300, 1000, infinity, and let people live their lives, right? Well, hell no. For 1 simple reason: interests. And I am not talking about the obvious problem with interests (that you have to pay them), but the bit that everybody forgets: they are a bet against the future that growth will be high enough to pay them. And that's the problem. We have a low growth rate expectancy (we western countries). And that's why serious economists (meaning: not Krugman) are telling us that increasing our debt exposure is the path to future ruin.
Now, you will say, but anti-austerity financed with higher taxes will bring growth! If that were true, we would have had serious growth the last 50 years (a period within which tax ratio on GDP increased pretty much everywere). The truth is that historically public spending has brought much less growth (if any) than private spending. Meaning: for each $ that we take away from privates to the public we are deliberately reducing present and future growth. And why public spending brings less (if any) growth? Well, simply because the market is so complex that we need multiple agents. Giving too many resources to 1 agent (the State) is like betting most of our money on 1 black jack game, does it make sense? No. You need to spread risk and resources, you need to let people make decisions and you need to let people keep most of what they produce.