So the debt is there and it needs to be paid off, or forgiven. Given that forgiveness outside the confessional is unlikely, and the other options, inflation and default, are even worse, it is pretty much inevitable that over the next few years financial repression and higher taxes on top earners will become a part of the landscape. The ongoing (at time of writing) negotiations over increasing taxes as part of the resolution of the 2013 US fiscal cliff debacle is simply the beginning. This is how we are going to deal with our debts—through taxes and not through austerity. Not because austerity is unfair, which it is, not because there are more debtors than creditors, which there are, and not because democracy has an inflationary bias, which it doesn't, but because austerity simply doesn't work.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 659