Think for a second what "austerity" actually means. It simply means "spend less". It does not say what exactly to spend less on, and it does not even prevent you from spending more where it makes sense, as long as you can afford it. So you can have austerity by getting rid of public sector bloat, privatizing state owned organizations and cutting the defense budget for example. Saves tons of money and nobody is going to starve in the streets. Other European countries did this as well, Germany included, and we're all still very much alive. What's so hard to understand here?
You are talking about the theory of austerity while remaining completely ignorant of the practice of austerity in Greece and its consequences. There is a certain misunderstanding you fall into by using the word austerity to describe different policies. The size of austerity matters. And we have economical data to judge results. See and Read:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/how-much-austerity-has-europe-actually-endured-
The size of the austerity that happened and demanded means exactly that, you can't do it only by targeting the public sector alone, and even that has its breaking point. And Greece never achieved as high surpluses as it would need to, to sustain this new plan. Which won't be able to solve the debt issue at the end and will lead to new increases of austerity as well and a new program. And during its years of implementation as usually their projections are too optimistic. Really, sooner or later there will be a grexit in reaction to it.
Now, Greece pulling a Germany in terms of austerity would mean in early 2000s to do the kind of austerity Germany did.
And although it would be harsher than what the Germans did, nearer to the German austerity but kind of different enforced austerity would be more recently during this crisis to do austerity that targeted wasteful excesses of Greek public spending and some more limited targeted taxation, not the rest and be much smaller. However the programs were big enough and will continue to be that there isn't room for targeting only bad spending (which during a recession might also have negative effects). That is the reality. Theoretical discussions about austerity is for another issue, when it comes to the policy that Greece gets to enforce, you need to look at the data and results of what was asked of Greece and of the results of enforcing the new program. Not a nebulous theoretical austerity. But this kind of austerity. And this kind of austerity has caused plenty of human misery, economic disaster and yes hunger as well.
And that is without even touching the issue of currency.
