However, there are at least two problems with using Estonia as an austerity success case. First is that they went into the recession with a surplus. Dubya spent the USA's surplus and safety margin (while the pre-Tea-Party sat quietly).
Second, they are a small nation such that they can play a similar role as the Cayman Islands (where Mitt hides his profits) as far as tax havens for big companies. This doesn't work in a large nation because the benefits of being a tax haven are too small relative to the population.
I've seen no evidence that austerity works on medium and large nations. The few examples sometimes used are cases where the cut-backs happened before or after a world-wide recession, not during, and are thus not comparable.
