ABSTRACT
Those of us who learned our Economics before 1970 would have been incredulous if told that there would be unemployment rates in double digits in many developed countries, and that it would be widely claimed that nothing could be done about the problem. To be more precise, economists who learnt their subject between, let us say, 1950 and 1970, and those who taught them, would have shared this view with only a few exceptions. In addition, governments and political commentators both at the academic and the journalistic ends of the scale, would have shared the assumption that governments which presided over such unemployment would not last beyond the next general election. Furthermore, it was felt that such electoral punishment would be justified—governments had the ability to avoid widespread unemployment if only they managed the economies suitably. A few economists had not gone along with the consensus, but they were a small minority and their views were generally ignored. Their appeal to academic economists was beginning to widen slightly, but had not yet spread at all into the wider world. Until the late 1960s, even amongst academic economists, these dissenters (often the followers of Milton Friedman) were known primarily for other aspects where they disagreed with the mainstream consensus, and their views about the possibility or desirability of controlling unemployment were generally downplayed.
