Meaning and Definition of Austerity

Austerity is a term that comes from the latin austerĭtas, which indicates the quality of what is austere. Someone austere, meanwhile, is someone sober, penitent and severe, that does any kind of fanfare and that complies strictly with the rules of morality.

Examples: "this Government will maintain the austerity and will be totally transparent," "I think that during this period of economic crisis, austerity is essential", "the singer is not characterized by its austerity: just spend half a million dollars nothing only in toy for his daughter.

Austerity can be combined with frugality (consumption of goods and services) or asceticism (the refusal of material pleasures). Therefore, it can be understood as the mortification of the passions or meanings.

On the other hand, austerity has nothing to with the deficiency. A millionaire can be austere, whereas a poor man can waste the little that it a. Suppose that the owner of a large company wins 200,000 dollars a month. This amount would allow it to have luxury cars and a mansion, or to travel around the world. However, this contractor prefers austerity: he lives in the House he inherited from his parents, drove an old car and still spends the summer on a beach near his home.

A man who is unemployed, however, spends beyond its means and squanders its savings without thinking in the future. Even with no job, this person demonstrates that she does not know what is the austerity and decides to buy a new car while it has already one and with which she gets to move without problems.
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