Of late there is a new word in the news that was rarely if ever heard before. The word is Austerity and in its present context it loosely translates to; The party is over and it is payback time.
When it comes to democracy and thus the ability to elect the leaders of a country, it most certainly is a good thing all and all. And as we at Connecting the Dots have pointed out on occasions, that for any democracy to prosper, a certain level of education must be achieved by the people who will eventually cast their vote. However it is now becoming increasingly apparent, to avoid future austerity measures, an even higher level of education must be obtained.
Any person that wants to run for a political office in a democracy must provide one or more reasons why they should be elected. Often and apparently far too often, throwing out bits of candy so to speak to get a vote is a method used. Often those bits of candy translate into some financial gain for the person who votes for them. If that financial gain is more or less reckless, that recklessness becomes the seeds for austerity. The name of that candy is often called populous policies.
What this essentially says is when people are asked to select a politician, they must truly examine what is in the immediate future and will the politician make the hard choices and do what they must. That can even mean putting an end to their political future by doing very unpopular things to balance the budget and tend to debt otherwise known as austerity measures.
So after several election cycles that elected politicians that offered populous things to get elected and to stay in office, tax revenues decreased along with other contributing factors that eventually lead to the need to take drastic measures to fix. So politicians that run on saying they will fix things, avoid the word austerity because that word is now linked to riots and violence in several countries. Austerity is a trigger word that says the medicine tastes horrible, so they dance and move things around to distract the reality of what their plans are.
The bottom line is cut past all the political spin and hype and take a good hard look at what the politician is saying without saying it, and that is where the need for an even higher level of education comes in. The ability to vote responsibly and not selfishly is key to avoiding drastic measures to fix things. Everyone must put the best interest of the country first. This is no less than a war effort where things were rationed to keep the military supplied on the battlefield. In this case it is digging out of debt that was caused by making the wrong choices and not thinking about the consequences.
