Austerity Posterity

The Dream

Little Everywhere

Health & Fitness, Business, Society & Culture

4.6 • 15.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, producer Dann Gallucci (filling in for host Jane Marie) sits down with journalist and author, Mary O'Hara, to talk about our big, beautiful - and shrinking - social services in the US, from the perspective of a UK transplant who's 2014 book "Austerity Bites" (10th anniversary version is out now) looks at the impact of the austerity measures put in place in the UK after the 2008 global financial crises.

Spoiler - they we're and remain terrible for the average UK citizen. Perhaps a lesson for US voters at a time when the dismantling of government institutions and the slashing of social services we've taken for granted for decades, are contributing to an ever-growing income gap that has so many Americans feeling pretty helpless.

You can find more from Mary here:

Twitter (X) maryohara1

Instagram maryoharawriter

Threads maryoharawriter

Website:

https://www.maryoharaproductions.com/

AUSTERITY BITES 10 YEARS: US: https://tinyurl.com/yc3bfecf UK: https://tinyurl.com/42yz9848

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, you've reminded me of something that is a real bugbear of mine.
0:05.2	What is that term?
0:07.5	It essentially means it really bugs me.
0:10.7	Just in case.
0:11.3	But a bug bar.
0:11.9	No one knows this.
0:13.3	Mary's Irish.
0:20.8	Welcome back to The Dream. I'm Dan Galucci, filling in for Jane Marie this week. For most of my life,
0:26.7	if I was going to have a conversation about wealth inequality or our lack of social services in the U.S.,
0:33.4	those conversations were with people who had a similar interest, and there weren't a ton of them.
0:39.1	Nowadays, it really wouldn't surprise me if anyone came up to me and started talking about wealth inequality.
0:45.1	It's obviously affecting more people.
0:47.4	All you have to do is look at the average annual income from the year 2000 to the year 2023.
0:54.7	In 2000, it was $76,000.
0:57.0	In 2023, it was $76,500.
1:00.7	And during that time, inflation rose 80%.
1:04.8	There are more billionaires now,
1:06.9	and the billionaires have more billions.
1:10.0	In 2017, we cut taxes for the rich,
1:12.6	and we are about to do it again if we pass Trump's proposed big, beautiful bill.
1:19.1	Thankfully, I have a friend named Mary O'Hara
1:21.6	who agreed to come in and talk to me this week.
	...

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