"Clearly, there is a great deal in Becker’s legacy to be deeply disturbed about. But there is also something about Becker’s approach I find bracing. A lot of people are greatly offended by the implicit suggestion in Becker’s work that decisions like marrying, or having children, are economic transactions like any other — no different than buying a car or a pair of shoes. And of course those are entirely different categories of decisions — in one sense. But marital relationships, parent-child relationships, decisions to marry and divorce, etc., are also profoundly economic acts. That can sometimes be hard to see, given the pervasiveness of sentimental claptrap about the family throughout American society. But Becker blasted through the Victorian detritus of all that bourgeois romantic ideology to analyze the ways in which marital and reproductive behaviors are fundamentally rooted in a utilitarian economic calculus. You could appreciate his general approach without necessarily buying into the details of his argument. That was a real contribution, and even a radical one, after a fashion."
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Academics from the United StatesBloggers from the United StatesLibertarians from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in Economics
Original Language: English
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Kathleen Geier, "R.I.P., Gary Becker", Washington Monthly (May 4, 2014)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gary_Becker
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Gary Becker
Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist and a professor of economics and sociology at the . Described as “the most important social scientist in the past 50 years” by the New York Times, Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.
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