These days there is a new problem, which did not exist before, which is characterize by massive misinformation going around.
However, there are things that never changed. At the top of the pyramid, we have ideology, and immediately below economic theories, which like any theory are true as long as their basic assumptions hold.
In political economy the issues are centered around the roll that governments should play. For some on the right the market economy has an autocorrection mechanism and requires no government intervention. For those on the left the market mechanism is full of imperfections and drawbacks leading to the need for continuous government intervention.
The range of choice goes from anarcho-capitalism to communism. Currently the system governing us is called neoliberalism. If you look at the difference between Labor and the Liberals, it all boils done to the fact that according to Labor governments still have a role to play basically through the manipulation of the tax system, which leaves Labor open to the accusation of being a high tax party. However, both do accept and work under a neoliberal order.
"Neoliberalism is a term used to describe the resurgence of economic liberalism and free-market capitalism1. It is a model of capitalism that favors greatly reduced government spending, deregulation, globalization, free trade, and privatization2. It is considered a reversal of the Keynesian phase of capitalism that was prevalent from 1945 to 1980".
Philips was a New Zealander economist working in Britain that first noticed the existence of a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, at least in the short and medium run.
Neoliberalism - WikipediaAnarcho-capitalism - WikipediaCommunism - Wikipedia
