[lbo-talk] post analytical Marxist era/ post liberal era

John Thornton jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Thu Sep 27 19:05:39 PDT 2007


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Milton Friedman believed a lot of silly, wrong, or
> wicked things. I don't endorse all his views because
> he agreed with me on one of them. I don't say that all
> his views were consistent either.

I wasn't suggesting any of the above, just pointing out that the idea of a right to a job conflicts with the idea of a natural rate of unemployment. Nothing else. Milton was a smart guy who said some smart things and some dumb things and like many, never let the facts totally disrupt his ideological viewpoint. A tweak here and there kept everything in place for him. Certainly there is a connection (trade-off seems too strong) between the employment rate and inflation but using unemployment to fight inflation is rather unethical in my view even if it should turn out that it is the easiest way for the state to tackle inflation. Hiding ones desire to curb inflation using the unemployment rate by cloaking it in language like "the natural rate of unemployment" is also cowardly. Acting as if it was a law of nature which cannot be fought is loathsome to use a word recently misapplied.

John Thornton



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