ABSTRACT
From the Conservative point of view, unemployment is logically unnecessary. In an economy left to its own devices, involuntary unemployment can result only from short-run market readjustments. Over the long term, as prices, wages, and output adjust, there is work for all at wages commensurate with their productive contributions. Individuals who value their labor higher than the market does or higher than its actual contribution to output, or who simply prefer leisure to work, may be jobless; however, their unemployment is voluntary and not a fundamental problem demanding policy makers' attention. At least, this would be the situation if labor markets were free of the interventions or stickiness and inefficiencies that abound in a world of Liberal social engineering, powerful labor unions, big government, and popular expectations that individuals have the right to a certain level of wages irrespective of these individuals' actual contributions to production.
