Volume 1, Number 4 · October 17, 1963
Wild Raspberries
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Challenge to Affluence
by Gunnar Myrdal
Pantheon, 172 pp., $3.95
'As I see it,' Gunnar Myrdal writes, 'the most important problem in the world today…is that America shall succeed in getting out of the rut of slow economic progress.' It is not mere hyberbole that leads Myrdal, an internationally known economist, to call this 'the most important problem in the world,' nor mere humanitarian concern that makes him, a Swede, fasten on America's well-being. Myrdal's contention is that a rich and expansive America is a force for imaginative, accomodating, and magnanimous international relations, while a stagnant and frustrated America is not. America, says Myrdal, is a poor loser in the game of international politics. As a nation that has not mastered its domestic economic difficulties, it is hardly in a position to assert a natural leadership in foreign economic affairs. Rather, a sense of failure at home is apt to generate a peevish and recriminative attitude abroad. Hence on America's domestic prosperity hinges not only the well-being of its own citizens, but to an important degree the well-being of the world.
Review, 1299 words
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