The idea of fiscal austerity raises delicate and disheartening thoughts in the minds of every citizen of the world; these agitated thoughts include, among others, the high cost of living, unemployment, and adverse hardships. During the last few years of economic difficulty, many politicians, economists and financial experts, including George Osborne, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom, have mentioned the need to change fiscal policies. He said that proper management and management of these policies was the only way to recover from the long economic growth – recession environment. (Reuters UK, 2013) He believed that the current rate of spending by the British government, with no solid and progressive means of financing it but with debt, would worsen the economic crisis and accumulate a huge debt for future generations, if an immediate no steps have been taken to stop and correct it. This raises the need to answer the question: “What is fiscal austerity?” Fiscal austerity, according to the lexicon of the Financial Times, in its simplest term refers to “governments' policies on how to generate revenue or money, through increased taxation, while reducing spending and borrowing in order to minimize the deficit." In essence, through fiscal austerity, governments use economic tools such as taxation, subsidies and spending management to influence and improve unemployment rates, inflation, interest rates and the individual well-being of people. citizens in the economy. In an effort to address unemployment by increasing the money supply in an economy, a government might decide to increase its spending or capital investments in building highways, housing, and general infrastructure building in a country other... half of the paper... there is no guarantee that the people affected by these cuts will spend such money in the economy because they may decide to save it instead. Furthermore, cuts to welfare and benefits could lead to increased pressure on local banks in the form of financial assistance. This could lead to skyrocketing interest rates and low confidence in the private sector as the incentive to borrow, i.e. low interest rates, will not be available. This could also lead to a decline in GDP, which worsens the recovery from recession. Finally, not everything is bad in relation to these cuts. The long-term effect could eliminate fraudulent claimants from the system and increase the chances of genuine claimants being able to prove their circumstances. Furthermore, it could also lead to an increase in the overall workforce that the government relies on to raise revenue through taxes for economic expansion.
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