Getting Down To Basics

All the talk of "austerity" in part is designed to strike fear into the minds and hearts of ordinary people.  Vote for me and mine because only we can save you from the horrors of it.  But real austerity is a world away from what is now the case in the more developed world.

Again in the west what we consider hardship and limitations would be regarded among the poorest as luxury and riches.  Together with rafts of state benefits and services some of those seen on TV as being hard up and struggling will appear to others as having a desirable standard of living.

So it is little wonder that many want to come, especially when kin are already here and established.  I recall that when we really had austerity in the UK what is now regarded as poverty would have seemed to be unimaginable luxury to some. 

Even in the 1950's newly married couples might not have TV, central heating, fridges, let alone freezers, a bathroom and those really in luck might have a washer/spin dryer to enable manual washing.

Today The Mises Institute has tried to point out in simple terms what is real austerity in an article which explains brutal reasons for saying we are nowhere near it.  It does not make it welcome and many would argue politically impossible short of a collapse situation.

The picture above is of a Southern Railway "Austerity" from the 1940's when in order to radically reduce the cost of having and running a basic freight locomotive this is what they came up with.

It was ugly, noisy, did not much resemble the received ideas of what a locomotive should look like but it worked.