"Social programs and public investment" are hardly the only things a government can cut. This is just a heavily biased counter-narrative used to protest against them. They may be the low hanging fruit given the entrenched interests which protect corporate welfare projects, tax breaks to "friends" of government, defence spending, foreign aid, the countless non-social agencies within government, etc, etc, etc.

Nor can you point to some half-hearted "austerity" where there was no change in the gov culture which brought about the unsustainable spending, nor factoring in the complete scale on which the previous government spent recklessly for which austerity is required in some countries vs others (and size of GDP, dependency on public investment/social programs, etc).

Even HN isn't immune to political flamewars.