If it seems that I'm often critical of Sumner it's partly because I give him the credit he deserves. I wonder how many of his readers get it? Morgan Warstler always complains that Scott should directly engage the Right wing the Tea Party, etc rather than the large mainstream.
If he did it would be much less effective. As it is he speaks to readers, most, perhaps who don't understand him. His bold gambit is not appreciated as it is not understood. He himself has admitted that most of his readers don't understand his real agenda.
However, why is this exactly? Is it by design? What I do know is that many think Sumner is all about stimulus, albeit on the monetary side. Nope. His main agenda is not monetary stimulus but fiscal austerity
In March Sumner made this striking comment in answer to those who criticized him for thinking that NGDP can fix all problems-after all what about structural problems?
"Arnold is wrong in claiming that we think “any desired macroeconomic outcome can be achieved” via monetary policy (or fiscal policy.) Real shocks will continue to cause real problems. If an asteroid destroys 1/2 of the US, the Fed should keep NGDP (per capita) growth right on target for the other half."
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?m=201203&paged=3
I think nothing crystallizes better how facile is this one-dimensional hyper focus on NGDP and nothing else. If an asteroid destroyed half the US there would be little point to worrying about a NGDP target. Indeed, necessarily you would have to have NGDP for a protracted period that is much higher than his preferred 5.5% NGDP target.
With a disaster of that magnitude which would literally blowup the world economy we would in many ways be stuck back at square one. What is undeniable is that fiscal policy would be more important by a factor of 1000 than monetary policy. Yeah, I'm sure QE3 might get us back to trend NGDP
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