PECKERWOOD'S WEEKLY LUNOCRACY POST! For the Week of 1/26/2026!

The Highest Product of Capitalism (after John Heartfield)
1979, Jo Spence, with Terry Dennett

Austerity is not an unfortunate economic reality; it is a political weapon. It is how the state disciplines the public while protecting capital, and it has been doing this without impunity for decades, if not longer. Oversight is nonexistent. There is no culpability. It isn’t even questioned, and both political parties are complicit in pushing this as an undeniable truth. The messages differ, but the flavor is the same. 

The Republicans are undoubtedly more corrupt, crueler, greedier, more vindictive, and recklessly divisive. This creates the illusion that the Democrats are positioned to be the answer and that once they are in power, everything will change. Democratic politicians push this narrative; however, they never rise to the occasion, resulting in bitter disappointment and frustration for those who vote for change. With tepid moral outrage, they make the rounds on MSNBC, give rousing speeches, and then capitulate or quietly vote for many of the same policies that essentially support the same ideal. 

The United States government will routinely claim there is “no money,” but they don’t really mean there is no money. What they mean there is no money for you. It is the equivalent of the middle finger and a directive to piss off. 

They will tell you that there is absolutely no money for healthcare, yet there is always money for war. Politicians will approve hundreds of billions for weapons systems, defense contractors, and foreign military aid without hesitation, while insisting that universal healthcare is fiscally irresponsible. Vital mental health services are rationed. Disability claims are denied as a matter of policy, forcibly leaving the disabled to languish in poverty without recourse. People die waiting for basic care while the Pentagon fails audits year after year and is rewarded with larger budgets anyway.

There is no money for housing, they say with a straight face, but there is endless money for real estate developers. Cities plead poverty while handing out tax abatements, zoning gifts, and public land to luxury projects that displace residents and inflate rents, creating more space for those with abundant incomes, and providing no solution for those who have been pushed aside. 

When homelessness rises, the response is not a plan to create affordable housing; it is to criminalize and brutally police without mercy. Poverty is treated as a public nuisance rather than a complete policy disaster. Many of the unfortunate souls caught in this nightmare desperately need mental healthcare, rehabilitative services, and compassion. Instead, they are met with a system that marginalizes them, ignores them, or an underfunded bureaucracy that resembles an obstacle course as an endurance challenge. 

They tell the public that there is no money for education, but there is always money to forgive corporate debt. Students are burdened by loans for decades, accruing interest that can double or triple the original amount, leaving them saddled with debt the moment they graduate. At the same time, corporations routinely have loans restructured, forgiven, or quietly written off. When students ask for relief, they are scolded and lectured about personal responsibility. When corporations ask for relief, they are called “job creators” whose stability is essential to the economy.

There is no money for climate mitigation, but there are massive subsidies for fossil fuel companies whose profits depend on aggressive planetary destruction. Governments fund extraction, will insure the risk, suppress protest, and then cavalierly tell individuals to recycle more and consume less. Responsibility and blame are pushed downward while profit is funneled upward.

Austerity works by shifting the problem to the populace. When systems fail, individuals are moralized. If healthcare collapses, it is your fault; you should have planned better. If infrastructure fails, you should have been better prepared. If work becomes unstable, you should retrain, reskill, and hustle harder. Systemic structural violence is reframed as personal inadequacy.

For ordinary people, risk is privatized, but for the powerful, it is socialized. Banks gamble recklessly because they know they will be bailed out. Workers miss a paycheck and risk losing everything. Corporations poison community resources and pay fines that amount to rounding errors, which they have already anticipated and are fully prepared to pay. And then they proceed to break the law for profit as planned. If individuals fall behind, they are buried under penalties, interest, and an endless cycle of punishment.

Austerity is unmistakably insidious because it also functions as a form of psychological warfare. It effectively trains people to expect precarity and to view security with suspicion. Anyone who needs help is treated as a potential fraud. Anyone who demands more is labeled unrealistic, entitled, or criminal. Without an ounce of irony, they call it waste. Meanwhile, wealth extraction continues quietly through tax codes, subsidies, loopholes, and regulatory capture.

The state does not lack money. It lacks the political will to stop serving capital at the expense of human life. We are told there is no alternative. This is the most durable and accepted lie of modern governance. 

Alternatives do exist. There is plenty of money for universal healthcare, robust disability support, public housing, debt relief, climate transition, and dignified work. To claim it is impossible is disingenuous and ridiculous. The ugly truth is that it is incompatible with an economic order that prioritizes profit, militarism, and corporate immunity over collective survival.

Austerity is not about fiscal responsibility. It is about obedience. It teaches people to endure deprivation quietly while the wealthy are insulated from consequence. It narrows political imagination until the public argues over stale crumbs while the machinery of extraction hums along undisturbed.

A society that can always find money for war, policing, corporate rescue, and surveillance is not broke. It is violent.

And it is governed exactly as the powerful intended.