I am having a little difficulty believing I am on a 'progressive' economics network and yet reading the stuff that is being posted. 1. during the war (2nd WW) the unemployment rate fell to around 1% without any structural and frictional constraints but within the framework of a strict f (that should be) fiscal and monetary policy framework. So it is not the economic constraints that determine the rate of unemployment, but the political (class power) constraints. 2. In the post-war studies, the Phillips curve analysis gave an approximate trade-off of 3-4% inflation for 3-5% unemployment. What has changed? What is the great structural change that caused this tradeoff to jump to this new, mythical, NAIRU (or NRU) of which there is nothing natural except the gullibility of the population and the culcability of the polititians. 3. The dual (segmented) labour market analysis is so much more sophisticated and complex than the version given here that I weep for our profession. It is frustrating to see such simplistic first-year neoclassical analysis passing off as so-called radical analysis. Get with it! Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
