The Local Austere Creditor

Abstract

efforts to trace how austerity policies 2 involve the downward and outward transmission of budgetary cuts, until they reach the level of financial hardship for individual households (James, 2020). Several authors have shown that State governments' fiscal retrenchment through austerity has frequently involved the devolution of risk and responsibility, and the downloading of the task of cutting budgets from higher to lower levels of government (Peck, 2012, p. 631). Peck describes a process of "scalar dumping" under which US federal and state governments shift the primary burden of implementing austerity cuts to local authorities and agencies (Peck, 2012, p. 632). Cooper discusses how the neoliberal "remaking" of US state and local finance has involved a "paradoxical ballooning of municipal and personal debt" while limits are placed on central government expenditure (Cooper, 2021). As tax-deprived local authorities increasingly rely on alternative (and regressive) income sources such as user fees and fines, this form of austerity "ends up transferring the fiscal burdens of the state downwards, constituting the income and asset-poor as both permanent defaulters on the public fisc and revenue-generators of last resort"(Cooper, 2021). Gray and Barford illustrate how under UK austerity policies, the greatest proportional cut in public expenditure has fallen on local government, reshaping "the relationship between central and local government in Britain, 2 Blyth describes austerity as 'a form of voluntary deflation in which the economy adjusts through the reduction of wages, prices, and public spending to restore competitiveness, which is (supposedly) best achieved by cutting the state's budget, debts, and deficits.' Similarly, Schui notes that while 'the term austerity is often used to denote public spending cuts in general', its 'main rationale' is 'to restore balance in government finances and regain economy dynamism and competitiveness', by cutting government expenditure (primarily consumption, rather than investment, spending) and lowering labour costs (wages): (Blyth, 2013, p. 2; Schui, 2015, p. 2) "Accepted Manuscript" version of Joseph Spooner, 'The Local Austere Creditor' in Saul Schwartz (ed.

Natural person ltd.: Towards a unified discharge regime for entrepreneurs and consumers

“…80 In recent decades, however, countries that did not provide for discharge procedures for non-business debtors have adopted separate 'consumer insolvency procedures', offering previously unavailable debt relief to troubled households. 81 That evolution came with the deregulation of countries' consumer credit markets in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 82 causing an increase in household debt problems. 83 Indeed, a credit-based economy means that individuals take on considerable levels of debt, leading to higher rates of personal over-indebtedness.…”