NAIRU presents capitalism-specific unemployment as a natural law

Evidence

This is nowhere more evident than in the concept of the so-called natural rate of unemployment, or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). It evolved from the Phillips curve and argues that the economy has a natural rate of unemployment and that any attempt to push unemployment below this level will result in accelerating inflation. The NAIRU transforms a pain that is specific to capitalism into one that is supposedly unavoidable. It tells us that unemployment is not a political choice stemming from the economic system we have constructed but a fact of human affairs, stemming from the laws of nature themselves. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 275

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines NAIRU and exposes its ideological naturalizing function.
• XREF: Connects to the reading on austerity/‘there is no alternative’ — the naturalization of economic policy as inevitable law. — connects to: Unemployment is not a flaw of capitalism but essential to it — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 251