If economic policies were designed to benefit the majority of the population, then austerity would be a complete and utter disaster. The Tories can assure the populace that they will “secure […] a brighter future” however many times they like, but it won’t help stem the rise of food bank usage in this country, which increased by 51% in the last year alone. Nor will it help the homeless, what with the 79% increase in people sleeping rough in London since the coalition took power. A&E waiting times won’t improve either, with the official government target having recently been missed by its biggest margin in a decade. There’s also the rather inconvenient statistic of two thirds of economists believing austerity has harmed the UK economy, with Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman even going so far as to say “all of the economic research that allegedly supported the austerity push has been discredited”.

So why are cuts to public spending set to continue for the foreseeable future; in Britain, in Europe, and around the world? Is it some sort of global conspiracy of malicious oligarchs, hell-bent on waging ideological warfare on ordinary people? Or maybe it’s because politicians are just plain stupid as well, I mean look – they won’t even listen when the majority of mainstream economists disagree with them!

This narrative of moral and intellectual failure amongst the political and financial elite dominates the discourse amongst those opposed to austerity, carrying the implicit belief that if only those at the top could rid themselves of this “delusion” (to quote Krugman) and if only they would stop being such callous psychopaths, then things wouldn’t be so bad. These “neoliberals”, these “austerians”, these “Thatcherites”, these “greedy bankers” – all we need to do is sweep them and their “nasty” ideology out of the political arena, and things will get better, right?

If that was so, then France should be doing just fine, what with their “socialist” President Hollande slapping millionaires with a 75% supertax, in addition to raising corporation taxes. Except these got repealed after a mere two years, following a media firestorm where he was accused of making France “anti-business” and turning it into "Cuba without sun". How about the Green Party in Germany, who were founded on the principles of social justice and grassroots democracy? Unfortunately, once in power, having apparently shed the “hippy fantasies” of their youths to rise to the responsibilities of “real statesmen”, they became one of the most enthusiastic proponents of Germany’s neoliberal shock therapy programme “Agenda 2010”, which slashed corporation taxes whilst freezing wages and benefits. Fast forward to 2015, and we have SYRIZA in Greece, who were voted in on a radical, anti-austerity agenda, and are now faced with a plummeting approval rating after repeatedly trying to present themselves as “responsible” and “pragmatic” to the European powers that hold their country hostage.

The crux of the matter is, if you accept an economic system based on the relentless pursuit of profit above all else, you have to accept the system’s cold, uncaring logic. No matter how many impassioned speeches a politician makes, promising to “restore dignity” by fighting austerity and taxing the rich, they will get nowhere working within the confines of capitalism, faced as they are with the impossibility of taming an anarchic system that is only able to see through the lens of corporate profits.

Spending £850 billion to bail out the banks, yet simultaneously waging war on the welfare state? Undoubtedly, the responsible course of action. Paying farmers not to produce food so as to stabilise prices, whilst three million children around the world die each year due to malnutrition? Perfectly logical. The reality is that lasting economic policies are not designed with people’s wellbeing in mind. They are designed to protect the economic and political status quo at all costs, only granting concessions during times of growth – a bygone era.

In the final analysis, governments are not ahistoric, unbiased institutions, formed in order to “serve the people”. Throughout history, states have always been the “executive arm of the ruling class”, formalising the dominance of one socioeconomic class over another and doing everything in their power to preserve the status quo. It is no different today – one only needs to skim through the front page of any business newspaper to see that politicians are judged by the standards of the market, with those embracing “fiscal responsibility” being lauded for their ability to make “tough decisions”, whilst those swimming against the current are unerringly deemed either hopelessly utopian, or dangerously radical (or, for a lucky few, both!).

So I’m sorry Mr Krugman, but austerity is not “delusional”. It makes perfect sense, in a world governed by the market and for the market. What is delusional is the notion that change can occur by putting forward academic arguments to those in power – assuming that the state exists in some sort of societal vacuum, free of external influences and vested interests; assuming that the parliament, as a whole, has free will to implement any policy once it has won the battle of ideas, as if it is somehow unaffected by the laws of global capitalism. The same goes for expecting change based on appeals to morality, presupposing that the purpose of the state is to maximise societal wellbeing.

If we truly want to change the status quo, we must rid ourselves of these misconceptions. You can’t fix the system by reasoning with or moralising those at the top, because there’s nothing to fix – the system is working just as it should, creating untold amounts of wealth for a tiny minority, whilst the majority suffer. Only when the twin engines of the profit motive and competition are eliminated as the driving forces of society, will austerity truly be delusional. In the meantime, whilst leaders around the world scramble to preserve the capitalist system – austerity makes perfect sense.