> Austerity is a political-economic term referring to policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both.
"Austerity" can take many forms too. It's not something you should support as a black/white thing. There's a ton of context involved, including why the state needs austerity and also what long term goals are involved.
As far as I'm concerned if a government spent and loaned recklessly for decades and the only solution is to make temporary cuts so the government can go right back to spending (ie, no long term changes to government culture, risk management, and fiscal responsibility were made) then while it's still "austerity", it's not necessarily a very useful one.
Additionally, despite all of the FUD about "austerity" measures the average nation state across the entire western world (and in Asia too, minus Singapore) have exploded in size over the last few decades.
Most of these "austerity" programs are a tiny, temporary, sliver relative to the massive growth in scale of the administrative state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity
Those who favor austerity will say that the austerity laid groundwork for Portugal's success, those who have opposing view say that it only helped.