Alan Cowell had an interesting piece in The New York Times on Nov. 14 contrasting public attitudes toward austerity now with attitudes toward the austerity that was the norm in postwar Britain — and beautifully described by the late Tony Judt.

As Mr. Cowell notes, one major difference is that back then the sacrifice was shared: “Before he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2010, the historian Tony Judt recalled childhood days just after World War II in a debilitated Britain that was slowly ceding its empire and its pre-eminence. ‘Clothes were rationed until 1949, cheap and simple “utility furniture” until 1952, food until 1954,’ he wrote in a memoir, concluding that austerity in ‘that bare-bones age’ was ‘not just an economic condition: it aspired to a public ethic.’ ” Mr. Cowell continued: “As it confronts its massive debt problem … Europe seems to have lost sight of the fact that it has been there before; that the baby boom generation found its roots in postwar hardship; that, as Mr. Judt suggested, the huge affluence of more recent years could barely have been imagined as people struggled to shake off the gloom of war.” But there are some other differences, arguably even more crucial.

First, postwar Britain had rationing; material consumption was depressed; but it had full employment, according to British historical statistics. This is enormously important.

All the evidence I’ve seen says that the psychological cost of unemployment is much greater than the loss of income. (And I know people who are comfortably fixed for money, but deeply depressed over their inability to find a job.) That’s why it’s so dumb to say, as some do, that things aren’t so bad in the United States right now because per-capita consumption is still high by historical standards.

Second, postwar austerity in Britain was driven by real, obvious limits on resources.

In particular, foreign exchange was in short supply. At a basic level, people knew why things were rationed: Britain had spent heavily on the war, so it had to scrimp to pay its bills.

Today, by contrast, austerity is being imposed because men in suits say that it’s necessary to satisfy the invisible gods of the financial market.

It’s understandable that the public is beginning to have its doubts, and not just because those invisible gods somehow demand sacrifices only from workers, never from the wealthy. For the fact is that those men in suits have no idea what they’re doing — a fact that was apparent to some of us early on, but is now becoming common knowledge.

And so if you want to contrast the stoicism of the postwar populace with the anger and confusion of today’s voters, don’t blame consumerism; blame our leaders, who have imposed gratuitous, unfair pain on their constituents — and their constituents are finally starting to figure it out.

Reader comments from nytimes.com

Some of those “men in suits” certainly know what they’re doing — they’re engaging in class warfare.

These “fathers of the euro,” like Jean- Claude Trichet, the just-departed European Central Bank president, are beholden to economic ideology with an almost religious fervor.

They would rather let their child die than take the necessary actions to keep him alive.

— Sasha Clarkson, Wales

British Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, are the ideological sons of Margaret Thatcher — in the name of good housekeeping, they’re putting Britain through one of its worst recessions since the end of World War II.

The men in suits in London know exactly what they’re doing. They believe that the government should be small and that the private sector should be given greater freedom to generate wealth.

The growth of the economy is of secondary importance. Mr. Cameron is only using the economics of debt and austerity as a convenient cover for his efforts to reshape British society and look after his connected friends — the ones with access to capital.

— P. McDonald, Australia

It seems a little silly to compare the austerity imposed on a bombed-out, war-weary nation like Britain in 1945 to that imposed on a fully intact, relatively productive nation like the United States today.

— Jim Hansen, California

The average person will always back austerity if he understands — and, just as importantly, feels — that the sacrifice he’s making is being shared not just by the guy next door but by all his countrymen.

But over the past 30-odd years, ever since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, Americans have seen this notion of shared sacrifice steadily erode.

Tax cuts for the wealthy and a tsunami of tax breaks and loopholes for corporations did two things: They created the era of extreme economic inequality in which we now live, and they sharply divided the nation between the few that have and the many who have not.

This is why the rallying cry “We are the 99 percent!” has resonated so well across the country, and why the right wants to stamp out the Occupy Wall Street movement, even if it means allowing police to attack peaceful protesters.

— Charley James, Minnesota

The United States would be in a much better position today if it hadn’t ditched the military draft. Having the draft during World War II provided the country with a sense of shared sacrifice, and that sense of community would have done us good throughout this past decade.

With a draft, America might not have plunged into war with Iraq without better intelligence. And politicians would have been forced to justify the immense sacrifice of the war as it progressed.

Perhaps Congress would have even created special savings bonds to encourage Americans (as opposed to the Chinese) to help fund the war effort.

— Name withheld, Arkansas