As Albert Hirschman once observed, when the same arguments are repeated with almost no modification for over 300 years, regardless of any contrary facts impacting them, we should do well to hold them with suspicion. In the spirit of Hirschman’s suspicion, these chapters 4 and 5, drawing from austerity’s intellectual history, offer an answer as to why it continues to dominate the minds of today’s governing and academic classes.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 267