Recessions can hurt but austerity kills.
It might not be news to you but since the beginning of the recession, 5 million Americans have lost access to healthcare on top of the 39 million already without access. Meanwhile in Greece, HIV cases have risen by 200% and in some of the worst hit countries, suicide rates have risen. Further to this, in my home country of Britain, the so-called “bedroom tax” (a rash and poorly thought out austerity measure in the UK to date, whereby, based on how many spare bedrooms a house has, housing benefit reductions are put in place ) could make homelessness rise by the thousands.
These are just some examples of how austerity is killing people or seriously harming them. Not only is austerity unethical, it’s a failed economic policy which doesn’t even make sense. Seriously, I urge you to look up the theory behind it, it’s absolute nonsense.
The worst thing about it is that we are just sitting idly by, letting it happen, both in the USA and in the UK. We should be taking a leaf out of Turkey and Brazil’s book and protesting these ridiculous measures. Any reasonable person right now should be part of an anti-austerity group.
If we don’t get active then we are in for anther decade of cuts, pain, suffering and, inevitably, death.
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