''..Wolfgang Streeck and Armin Schäfer argue in Politics in the Age of Austerity
(2013) that one result of cost controls is to emaciate the budget for
discretionary programmes, as more of the budget is consumed by debt
repayments and other mandatory expenditures. Given the success of the
rich in lobbying against tax increases, and in avoiding paying tax in
the first place, it is increasingly difficult to raise the revenues
needed for existing services. Taxes on consumption – which hit the poor
hardest – have been implemented, but there is limited political
tolerance for these. States are increasingly left with very little room
to manoeuvre, while the growing domination of government discourse by
neoliberal doctrine tends to suppress policy choices which are not
‘market-friendly’. In this situation, mild market interventions such as
temporary energy price freezes might be possible, but nationalising
energy companies will not be seriously considered. This narrowing of
democratic choice renders Westminster politics increasingly irrelevant
to the lives of citizens, except in so far as it panders to spite: the
punishment of the obese, the disabled, Scots, single mothers, immigrants
and so on..''
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