We tend to forget that someone has to spend for someone else to save; otherwise the saver would have no income from which to save. A debt, we must remember, is someone’s asset and income stream, not just someone else’s liability. Just as we cannot all hold liquid assets (cash), since that depends upon someone else being willing to hold less-liquid assets (stocks or houses), we cannot all cut our way to growth at the same time. For someone to benefit from a reduction in wages (becoming more cost-competitive), there must be someone else who is willing to spend money on what that person produces. John Maynard Keynes rightly referred to this as “the paradox of thrift”: if we all save at once there is no consumption to stimulate investment.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 44