this to them. It has been an extraordinary period of self deception, ignorance and myopic behaviour. The only way we will return to full employment, with everyone sharing in the benefits, is if the public sector dramatically increases its role in the economy. The lessons from the past are very instructive in this respect. British economists Paul Ormerod in his Faber book Death of Economics wrote in 1994 (pages 202-203) that the the Post-WWII period up to the mid-1970s, which were characterised by strong GDP growth, balance of payments stability, and high investment could have occurred without the low unemployment that was also achieved. He said: The sole difference would have been that those in employment would have become even better off than they did, at the expense of the unemployed. The higher tax rates and buoyant government sectors allowed the flux and uncertainty of aggregate demand to be shared. While the bulk of the OECD has abandoned this method of sharing, some economies did maintain high levels of employment into the current period. Ormerod (1994: 203) suggests that Japan, Austria, Norway, and Switzerland, among others have (in their own ways): exhibited a high degree of shared social values,, of what may be termed social cohesion, a characteristic of almost all societies in which unemployment has remained low for long periods of time ... [and most significantly] ... the countries which have continued to maintain low unemployment have maintained a sector of the economy which effectively functions as an employer