Here are a few more links to articles about austerity.
This is an academic page on VoxEU.
Here is one from the New York Times by some professor at Cornell. At one point, he asks the question: If we are not going to spend money to repair infrastructure now, then when will we?
Here is one from Politicus that links to a Krugman article in which he points out that the pro-austerity crowd is not being honest. They really do not care whether it will help the economy. They just want to dismantle the welfare state and rip the safety net. If that is what they want, why not just argue for those things on their own merits?
He also makes an interesting point about motives: The pro-austerity crowd never seems to consider that the pro-stimulus crowd is pushing stimulus because the pro-stimulus crowd states and thinks that stimulus might be good for the economy. No, the austerity people insist the stimulus people have an agenda. After all, the austerity crowd has an ulterior motive. So they think that everybody else does as well.
We also see this in the climate change “debate”. I used quotes because from a scientific perspective there is no debate about climate change.