Jay asked my opinion on just why they want to bleed the patient faster. I don't claim to possess divine knowledge on this subject and am not a mindreader, but generally I think that in situations where you have multiple actors, it's wrong to imagine there's a single reason or cause. What we probably have are various combinations of stupid and evil. I'm sure there are people involved who are just corrupt, just trying to make a buck for themselves or their buddies. You have ideology of the stupid non-partisan centrist type, who truly believe that labor market "reforms" are "necessary" and that there's no possible way that a solution to a debt problem is more spending (it's a recession problem, not a debt problem, of course). There's ideology of the evil kind, as you have with the Tories, simply seeing this as a wonderful opportunity to punish poor, old, and disabled people as much as possible, because if you can't kick a cripple when he's down, what's the point of living, really?
And of course you have plenty of people along for the ride, because that's their job and all the cool kids "know" that austerity is the key to our future.
