John Komlos

Part III calls for rethinking the theoretical background in Economics in order to effectively move towards progressive economic policies that could enhance social justice.

John Komlos proposes a rethinking of the theoretical concepts in Labor Economics and, as a result, of the policy actions toward unemployment that has a destabilizing effect on society both politically and socially. In his view, a realistic economic theory should liberate itself from the commitment to the concept of the natural rate of unemployment as particularly important in light of the “jobless recovery” in wake of the Great Recession. Besides, given the trends of globalization and technological change that diminished considerably the demand for unskilled labor in the developed world, full employment will otherwise continue to elude us forever. Indeed,

Accordingly Komlos, work is important also from a psychological perspective: unemployment is degrading and diminishes self-esteem. As a result, the main problem to focus on is that the opportunity to work that is extremely unevenly distributed across the labour force. As a result, in the attempt to face unemployment, it would be important to introduce different shock absorbers into the labour market to distribute the available work in a more equitable fashion instead of the crude binary system we have today. Komlos’ proposal aims to create an inclusive labor market and envisions a just economy.

Gerson P. Lima also stresses the mistaken mainstream economic policy and calls for a rethinking of the foundations of the dynamics of macroeconomics. In his view, the economic policy has been commanded by the central banks´ shareholders, since the supposed core of the democratic political power, the Congress, transferred to them the exclusive political power of printing money. In this scenario, it may be expected that whoever has the power of printing money do it for the own sake and who has sufficient money