Sounds famil­iar, right? It’s like Amer­i­can work­ers forced to suf­fer through a reces­sion that they didn’t cause, a reces­sion that was, in fact, a result of banks’ reck­less risk-taking.

The peo­ple of Greece rebelled last week against the per­verse notion that they should con­tin­ue to endure bit­ing aus­ter­i­ty in a vain attempt to cure a con­di­tion that they are not sole­ly respon­si­ble for creating.

When bets by big banks world­wide failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly in 2008, mar­kets implod­ed and economies col­lapsed. Bailed-out banks, the wealth­i­est 1 per­cent and export-based economies like Chi­na and Ger­many quick­ly recov­ered. But work­ers strug­gled long-term. Aus­ter­i­ty imposed on them was a big part of the rea­son. Work­ers were the vic­tims of austerity’s slashed pub­lic ser­vices, wages and jobs. Those demand­ing aus­ter­i­ty — the 1 per­cent — and those impos­ing it — con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians — escaped its bit­ter effects with shields of cash. Aus­ter­i­ty was not for them. It was for those with­out big bankrolls. That would be bad enough if aus­ter­i­ty worked. But, as Greece illus­trates hor­ri­bly, it does not.

Greece was no shin­ing eco­nom­ic mod­el before the world­wide reces­sion hit. Its wealth­i­est cit­i­zens and busi­ness oli­garchs shirked their duty to pay tax­es, con­tribut­ing to a large nation­al debt. But Greece wasn’t in cri­sis until the banks bust­ed every country’s economy.

After the crash, the troi­ka of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion gave Greece loans to pay its cred­i­tors and pre­vent a Euro­zone coun­try from going bank­rupt. The loans came with aus­ter­i­ty as a condition.

The troi­ka demand­ed Greece low­er its debt by vicious­ly goug­ing pub­lic ser­vices, cut­ting pen­sions and the min­i­mum wage, fir­ing pub­lic ser­vants, rais­ing tax­es and sell­ing and pri­va­tiz­ing gov­ern­ment-owned assets.

Greek offi­cials did as they were told, and the country’s work­ers and fam­i­lies paid the price. Unem­ploy­ment sky­rock­et­ed to a hor­ri­fy­ing 28 per­cent—64 per­cent for young Greeks. Sui­cides andhome­less­ness climbed to shock­ing rates. Greeks denied pub­lic health ser­vices con­tract­ed malar­ia for the first time in 40 years. HIV infec­tion rose 10-fold. Still­births increased 21 per­cent and infant mor­tal­i­ty 43 per­cent.

Greeks point­ed to Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel of Ger­many as their tor­men­tor. She is the aus­ter­i­ty maven,demand­ing cru­el cuts in Greece, Ire­land, Spain, Por­tu­gal, and every coun­try that expe­ri­enced severe eco­nom­ic cri­sis after the banks wrecked the world econ­o­my. She insist­ed on the suf­fer­ing else­where as Ger­many, the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of grants, loans and loan for­give­ness after World War II, chugged along on waves of exports.

That is aus­ter­i­ty for the oth­er guy.

Its echoes can be heard in the harangues of Amer­i­can Repub­li­cans. They threw a hissy fit when in the first year of the Oba­ma Pres­i­den­cy, he per­suad­ed a Demo­c­ra­t­ic-major­i­ty Con­gress to approve stim­u­lus spending.

Stim­u­lus is the oppo­site of aus­ter­i­ty. It injects mon­ey into the econ­o­my, often through the job-cre­at­ing con­struc­tion of pub­lic facil­i­ties such as roads, bridges and sew­ers. And it works. Many econ­o­mists believePres­i­dent Obama’s stim­u­lus spared Amer­i­cans from the longer, deep­er reces­sion that shat­tered lives in Merkel’s aus­ter­i­ty-rid­dled Europe.

Once Repub­li­cans took con­trol of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and dou­bly so now that they’ve got the Sen­ate as well, they set about con­demn­ing Amer­i­cans to the aus­ter­i­ty that failed in Europe. They cut funds for pub­lic ser­vices and food stamps. They refused to extend unem­ploy­ment insur­ance. They tried repeat­ed­ly to rescind the health insur­ance that 10 mil­lion Amer­i­cans received through the Afford­able Care Act. They vot­ed to cut Social Secu­ri­ty for the dis­abled by 20 percent.

They’re intent on mak­ing mid­dle class and work­ing poor Amer­i­cans suf­fer. Repub­li­can politi­cians won’t feel the pain. They’ve got their polit­i­cal jobs and their gov­ern­ment-paid health insur­ance and pen­sions. Their cam­paign bene­fac­tors, the wealthy 1 per­cent, insu­late them­selves with mil­lions stashed in tax-evad­ing off­shore bank accounts and with oth­er assets. For exam­ple, a for­mer hedge fund direc­tor told con­gre­gants at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Davos meet­ing ear­li­er this month that his bil­lion­aire crony pri­vate jet own­ers are buy­ing secu­ri­ty for them­selves with airstrips and farms in seclud­ed places like New Zealand.

It’s aus­ter­i­ty for the oth­er guy.

The thing is, though, aus­ter­i­ty doesn’t work. It dam­ages economies. It doesn’t fix them like stim­u­lus does. Aus­ter­i­ty shrank the Greek econ­o­my by 25 per­cent. So even though the gov­ern­ment cut spend­ing and raised tax­es, it received less rev­enue from the high­er levies in its shriv­eled econ­o­my, mak­ing the loan pay­ments more difficult.

The vast major­i­ty of the mon­ey Greece bor­rowed through the troi­ka repaid inter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors and bailed out Greek banks. Although the inter­na­tion­al lend­ing insti­tu­tions prob­a­bly made bad bets when they lent mon­ey to Greece in the first place, tax­pay­ers — in this case Greek tax­pay­ers — were forced to ensure the banks didn’t expe­ri­ence the loss­es that should occur nat­u­ral­ly as a result of risky busi­ness decisions.

This is very sim­i­lar to Amer­i­cans forced to bail out their banks. Lenders reaped the prof­its when risk-tak­ing worked; suck­ers also known as tax­pay­ers got stuck with the bills when risk-tak­ing failed.

After six years of aus­ter­i­ty and deep reces­sion, the peo­ple of Greece balked. Last week, they elect­ed as their Prime Min­is­ter Alex­is Tsipras, a leader of the Syriza par­ty, who promised to aban­don aus­ter­i­ty, which he calls ​“fis­cal water­board­ing.”

He promised to demand the cred­i­tors write down the loans by half and to use the sav­ings to increase gov­ern­ment spend­ing, which will stim­u­late the Greek econ­o­my and employ­ment. That would raise rev­enues from tax­es, thus eas­ing loan repay­ment and pro­vid­ing funds for addi­tion­al stimulus.

Tsipras has sup­port from polit­i­cal upstarts in oth­er aus­ter­i­ty-shat­tered coun­tries. At one of his last cam­paign ral­lies, he was joined by Pablo Igle­sias, whose far-left polit­i­cal move­ment in Spain called the Podemos par­ty also rejects aus­ter­i­ty. Podemos vic­to­ries last year denied tra­di­tion­al Span­ish par­ties major­i­ty votes in May’s Euro­pean par­lia­men­tary elec­tions for the first time in 40 years. And polls show the one-year-old par­ty already has 20 per­cent sup­port and is gain­ing.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the left-wing lead­ers in Italy and France have demand­ed eas­ing of austerity.

Beyond being a failed pol­i­cy, aus­ter­i­ty doesn’t sell well. The major­i­ty, which suf­fers from it, doesn’t want it. They’re unwill­ing to lose their jobs, their health insur­ance, their homes, their pen­sions, their sav­ings, their children’s futures — their every­thing — to bail out banks, Wall Street, the rich, all those who nev­er feel a pinch — or even a twinge of sym­pa­thy. Let alone guilt.

When the major­i­ty gets an actu­al chance to vote on aus­ter­i­ty, it goes down. As it did in Greece. Democ­ra­cy cures austerity.