Robert Shiller - Does Austerity Promote Economic Growth?

In his classic Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1724), Bernard Mandeville, the Dutch-born British philosopher and satirist, described – in verse – a prosperous society (of bees) that suddenly chose to make a virtue of austerity, dropping all excess expenditure and extravagant consumption. What then happened?

The Price of Land and Houses falls;

Mirac’lous Palaces, whose Walls,

Like those of Thebes, were rais’d by Play

Are to be let; . . . .

The building Trade is quite destroy’d

Artificers are not employ’d; . . .

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http://www.nationofchange.org/does-austerity-promote-economic-growth-1326991277