Gunnar Myrdal
Gunnar Myrdal
Karl Gunnar Myrdalwas a Swedish economist, sociologist and politician. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He is best known in the United States for his study of race relations, which culminated in his book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. The study was...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth6 December 1898
CountrySweden
As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.
America is conservative in fundamental principles... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.
America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.
It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.
All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.
So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.
Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.
Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.
Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.
Social taboos are shy like virtue; once lost, there is no remedy
People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.
It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.
Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.
Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.