Austerity is omnipresent. Increases in interest rates, fresh privatizations, ever more flexible labor contracts, cuts to health care and public education, reduced capital gains taxes, and raised taxes on consumption. Every economic reform is presented to us as a necessity: we must tighten our belts, lest our state go bankrupt. We need to be realistic and make difficult choices, as the economic situation requires. A vision of economics understood as a pure, objective, logical science entrances us. There is no alternative, and no option but to rely on the experts.
But what do these experts mean…