The austerity policies of the neoliberal turn has already caused standards of living among the less fortunate to drop over the last few decades already. The 2008 crisis is when it started to impact the middle class and we're still feeling the impacts 16+ years later.
Now factor in the effects of climate change on many communities over the next decades. Maintaining our infrastructure i.e. lifestyle is going to be much much more expensive.
Minor correction: maintaining the lifestyle of billionaire coastal developers and their clientele will be much much more expensive. The poors will continue to be encouraged to eat shit and die as per usual.
The cute thing there being they outnumber the big fish by something like 400,000 to 1 in the US and without them there is literally no economy and no billionaire class.
Austerity in the context of government means spending cuts. "We diverted the tax money to cronies instead of anything that benefits you and spending actually went up" is not austerity, it's corruption.
The austerity policies of the neoliberal turn has already caused standards of living among the less fortunate to drop over the last few decades already. The 2008 crisis is when it started to impact the middle class and we're still feeling the impacts 16+ years later.