'Austerity''. We hear this word regularly, usually from the mouths of those who have neither practised it as a virtue, nor suffered it as a policy. Behind the seemingly neutral rhetoric of economic rationality against ''those who just want to bludge'', as the Coalition label them, is sometimes a less palatable urge: to gain political mileage from the poor.
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Politicians speak as if this were a straightforward logistical measure. But it is by no means guaranteed that cutting welfare, education and social programs will help the economy and society in the long run.
Take Britain, where austerity measures are in full swing with the Tory government. According to the IMF's analysis, the opposite is necessary to stop the economy dying: increased ''government spending on public investment'' and ''additional monetary stimulus,'' for example. In short: targeted spending designed to give the economy a heart-starter. Obviously Australia's economy is different to Britain's, but as a case study it certainly challenges the received wisdom.
The Tories' economic failure occurs against the backdrop of a much larger social failure. Unemployment is up, food prices are rising faster than wages, and worker protection has reportedly dropped below Mexican standards. Inequality is growing. Average earnings in Britain dropped 4.4 per cent last year, while incomes of the directors of FTSE 100 companies grew by almost 50 per cent. The austerity measures, as Oxfam notes in its study The Perfect Storm, will hit the poorest Britons some 13 times harder than the richest 10th. In these conditions, cutting welfare and social programs not only scuttles the workforce - it makes citizens sick, tired and angry. Hardly the road to recovery. But austerity is more than dubious economic policy. It is also political advertising, which sends a message that the government is tough on them: the undeserving poor.
This is as much about identity as it is about dollars. In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell wrote of Paddy, homeless for six months. ''You don't want to have pity on these here tramps,'' said Paddy, ''scum, they are. You don't want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me.'' Paddy was also a tramp, but he wanted to feel superior to his unlucky peers. Paddy maintained that tramps were lazy, and greedy, and needed to be dissuaded from charity by wretched food. Orwell explained that most homeless men were exhausted by hunger, illness and laws requiring constant travel, and that no one would live this way out of sheer idleness. But Paddy needed to believe that he was hard-working and decent, and fundamentally different to all the others in similar circumstances.
Australia today has its fair share of Paddies. Not necessarily the very rich, who have the connections, wherewithal and skills to remain aloof from poverty - not to mention some of the 20 trillion dollars reportedly stashed in offshore accounts worldwide. I mean the millions of families who are just one illness, injury, divorce or retrenchment away from mortgage stress, Centrelink or charity hand-outs. The point is not that the lower middle-classes are not decent and hard-working. The point is that many need the fiction of their own special stoicism to carry on; the fantasy of a slothful, avaricious mob, to highlight their own goodness, and provide an example of how far one can fall.
No doubt there are selfish and lazy welfare recipients. The same can be said of politicians, academics and fish 'n' chip shop owners. But there is no evidence that welfare recipients are particularly lacking in the basic virtues. Importantly, the plural of ''anecdote'' is not ''data'' - not even if the anecdotes are videotaped for prime-time infotainment programs, or photographed for the newspapers. Tabloid media and politicians often use this ''dole bludger'' fiction as they use refugees: as useful symbols of mainstream Australia's entitlements, and the virtues that supposedly guarantee them.
Perhaps this is consoling when work sucks, spouses are strangers to each other, and the heaven of relaxed and comfortable retirement has been replaced by the purgatory of a mortgage for life. But it is a fiction nonetheless, which demonises those whose crime is often just old-fashioned bad luck.
This does not mean that governments can spend willy-nilly on cash hand-outs or myopic social engineering schemes. No one will argue that fiscal responsibility is superfluous. What it means is that ''austerity'' cannot be used as a blithe euphemism for punishing the poor, while spending big on private schools or tax breaks for the well-off.
Austerity is indeed a virtue, and deserves encouragement and extolment - some Australians practise it daily, and in unenviable circumstances. But as political rhetoric and socio-economic policy it is often short-sighted and damaging, and applied brutally by those who will never suffer its deprivations and slurs.
Dr Damon Young is a philosopher and the author of Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free.
