Austerity - will anyone notice #auspol

With austerity rampaging across Europe and the US and increasingly in Australia - I often wonder where the deep analysis is - and when the sheep are going to wake up and say "hang on a minute".

The answer to both questions is - never.

There is no deep analysis because no-one wants you to know what the austerity game is all about. The sheep can't wake up because they don't even know that anything is going on - they have been distracted with football and shiny stuff from Harvey Norman. And a broken media.

But what is going on is really quite simple.

The ultra-right wing now *control* the governments and economies of Europe, the US and Australia. Maybe not always directly via the parliament - often indirectly via the rating agencies, the think tanks, the media and the commentariat.

And in reality - it's not even that they *control* these things - it's more that our *politicians* don't have the intellectual capability to compete. And anyway they are in it for the perks - not the battle of ideas.

Austerity is ALL about dismantling government services and reducing the long term government programme down to a few core things - perhaps only defence and policing. Why do you think policing is always in the mix?

The various austerity programmes are about making citizens take a big personal hit - and getting rid of as many of our core social services as possible. Medicare, Pensions, Unemployment benefits, Childcare, all the safety net things that we rely on as a society are under serious threat. Which is why President Obama's Medicare like health programme gets so much attention from wing nuts. And why Australia's unemployment benefit badly lags the age pension.

It's not even remotely about the money - it's all about ideology. You probably already know my views about ideology, Rufus.

This little game is about going as far down the dismantling path as possible before anyone notices - and can do anything to stop it. Which is why sheep are not even remotely up to date.

Europe and the UK are in deep sh*t - we are seeing 10%+ unemployment and 50%+ youth unemployment. The US is not far behind. Australia lags a bit due to the smart thinking of Kevin Rudd in 2008. But it is just a lag - nothing else.

One thing is very clear - we will get our dose of austerity - either this year or next - with Gillard or Abbott - both will try to take our government back to a small subset of what we are used to. Because they are beholden to people other than the voters.

And the sheep won't even notice until after it has happened. Then we might get a small but quite useless *bleat* out of them.