2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

Since we’ve read the whole book now, I was thinking about its purpose and how successful it is in achieving its goals. As far as I can tell, Basu and Stuckler were trying to write a widely accessible book that explained why exactly austerity policies cause public health problems (and to advocate for using innovative, comprehensive public health solutions in place of austerity).

I admit I am a poor judge of “accessible,” because college alters your perception of what is “accessible” and what isn’t, but it seems like the book succeeds on that front. I found this reading much easier than most of what I have to read for school because it doesn’t rely on academic jargon or unnecessarily complicated sentences. Also, it’s a pretty short book, and we all know that size matters.

It seemed that they made a solid case against austerity, as well. I already was pretty sure austerity was a crappy way to not-solve problems, but now I understand why and can articulate it a little better. However, they stated several times that austerity proponents base their arguments on ideology rather than evidence, which is troubling because it also means that evidence doesn’t pose a significant challenge to pro-austerity arguments. Accordingly, I’m not sure how useful this book is in making pro-austerity people question their reasoning. I am again not in a position to judge that.

One feature of the book I would like to draw attention to is its omissions. There are numerous social stratifying institutions and oppressive systems that Stuckler and Basu did not discuss. Medina raised the question of immigrants in the US, for example. They also did not make connections to the prison industrial complex (think The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander that we read earlier in the semester) or to disproportionate rates of homelessness among queer and trans people. To be clear, I understand why they did not discuss these or countless other social factors: it’s way too complicated for a single book, especially an “accessible” one. (A less justifiable reason is because advocacy for certain groups of people decreases one’s perceived respectability…but I think the excessive complication factor is enough to cover all the omissions.) This is not criticism, it’s a point of information.

The dramatic contrast between Icelandic and Greek responses to financial tragedy explained in this chapter really struck me. Stuckler and Basu did a good job making the public health consequences quite clear–how people’s health in Iceland was pretty stable through the recession, but people’s health in Greece got way worse and continues to be a problem. Because it’s not their point and because evidence is probably less clear-cut, though, they didn’t go into a particularly deep discussion of the effects of financial/public health crises on the social fabric of a nation. From the chapters, it seems like things are pretty solid in Iceland, while Greece’s sense of community is pretty tattered–a predictable response of people feeling continually unsupported and at-risk.

My experiences at Bluestockings support the conclusions about Greece. We’ve had a number of Greek activists and immigrants come to the store to run events on the financial crisis and resulting social crisis going on there, and from what they say, things are real bad. They, as well as many activists here, are very concerned about Golden Dawn (the neo-Nazi party referenced on the last page of the chapter) and the alarming support for it.

This last part is not specific to Greece or Iceland and I’m not really sure how to connect it, but the IMF is distressingly silly. You’d think they’d try to have some more solid reasoning to back up their recommendations–whenever they get involved in a country, the stakes are very, very high. The part about financial multipliers, and how the IMF just guessed that they average about .5 rather than that they vary significantly, struck me as particularly irresponsible. IMF, you know the saying–to assume makes an ass out of u and me.