William Black has the article Deprogramming Progressives Indoctrinated into Supporting Austerity on New Economic Perspectives web site.

A little bit of economics can be a truly terrible thing, for the introductory classes in micro and macro-economics are the most dogmatic and myth-filled part of the neo-liberal curriculum.  Dogmas that have been falsified for 75 years (such as austerity) are taught as revealed truth.  The poor indoctrinated student is then launched into the world “knowing” that austerity is the answer and that mass unemployment and prolonged recessions are small prices to be paid (by others) to achieve the holy grail of a balanced budget.  Students are taught that national budgets are really just like household budgets.  These dogmas are not simply false, they are self-destructive and cruel.  Neo-liberal economics is so bad and has gone downhill at such a rapid rate that it now worships the economic analog to bleeding patients – austerity – as a response to a Great Recession.  Millions of people are indoctrinated annually into believing this long-falsified nonsense, and that includes people who consider themselves progressives.

The remarkable aspect of neo-liberal economics is that the power of its myth has survived for many progressives even after its failed dogmas caused massive economic destruction, massive elite fraud with impunity, and crony capitalism so corrupt that it cripples democracy.  Indeed, the brainwashing they received is so effective that even after the eurozone ran a massive experiment with austerity that proved (again) to be a catastrophic failure they remain neo-liberal acolytes.  This column discusses three examples that exemplify the problem.

Then on his weekly Fraud report on The Real News Network he has the following conversation, Fiscal Cliff: Going Nuclear and the Grand Betrayal.

Some of the people who are supposed to be on our side in Washington are almost as bad as the people we know are working against us. We all must take some responsibility to educate ourselves on the real economics of the situation, and then try to educate others.

That education is one of the main purposes of my blog.