Debt begets debt: public and private debt in austerity Britain

Austerity is both a reaction to public debt and has itself helped produce public and private debt. The links between public and private debt and the politics which connect them are often invisible. This chapter examines some of the mechanisms which connect the two - highlighting some of the conceptual and policy links between the global financial flow of debt, to national and local governments, to the most vulnerable in our societies. In this way, debt is transmitted and transmuted - changed fundamentally in form, nature, or substance - in ways which are unjust and unsustainable for low-income individuals. This chapter argues that the state plays an important role in understanding and producing this debt - in transmitting debt, in pushing the responsibility of fiscal discipline down to local government, and increasingly, as a major creditor.