Scott Sumner Sinks to Matt Brueing's Level

      I say that tongue in cheek. Actually one of Sumner's own conservative readers advised him to stop letting Brueing bait him 

      "Scott, Don’t allow this clown to continue to bait you. Further volleys in this vein can only diminish you and elevate him. moveon.org."

       http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=27684

       Sumner himself has promised not be further 'baited' as the name of this last post was 'Last Reply to Matt Brueing.'

       Will Sumner leave it there if Brueing replies again? It's out of character-usually he keeps going and going-I still remember the time he argued with Simon Wren-Lewis for a month over the use of the phrase 'consumption smoothing' and what the identity S=I means. 

       I kind of hope this won't be the end of the debate. I don't think there's too much worry about Sumner actually being mature as he answered Brian Donohue quoted above like this:

       "But it’s so much fun to shoot ducks in a barrel, especially annoying ducks."

        Anyway, this debate seems to be over the welfare state and it's effect on U.S. poverty. Sumner is claiming that Brueing has no basis to claim that poverty would be higher without welfare. One of the problems with this debate is properly defining what is meant by this loaded term 'welfare.'

        Brueing tries to critique Sumner's style which he calls 'Grandpa Sumner.' There's some truth in it but another characteristic of Sumner is the No True Scotsman defense-he usually claims that anyone who criticizies him is too stupid to understand him. 

        "Matt seems to have forgotten to take his meds, as his newest post is one of thesilliest I’ve ever read.  Here’s an example:"

War On Poverty Backtrack
You’ll recall Grandpa Sumner’s initial argument for why transfers don’t net reduce poverty went like this:

1. Since the War On Poverty started, poverty hasn’t fallen at all. I know this because aint that what them dat gum progressive bloggers say?

2. Because poverty hasn’t declined, then that means anti-poverty transfer incomes only crowd out market incomes. Else, you would have seen poverty decline.

3. Therefore transfers don’t reduce poverty.

     "I was surprised to read this, because I believe exactly the opposite, that poverty has declined, and that transfers have reduced poverty, especially among the elderly."

     "So I looked for the passages where I made those claims, and all I could find is this:"

In fact, we spent trillions on the War on Poverty.  Unfortunately, poverty won and we lost.  Don’t believe me?  Isn’t the blogosphere full of progressives complaining that the poverty rate is just as high as in 1967?  I’m actually more optimistic about the living standards of most poor people than the typical progressive. Their living standards have risen with the general population.  But if “non-market income” actually explains the gains made by the poor, then this suggests that non-market incomes have merely crowded out market incomes.

It’s absurd to claim that it’s “easy” to solve a problem like poverty.  Yes, it’s easy if you are dealing with a group of people for whom you don’t have to worry about work disincentives.  Obviously it’s easier to reduce poverty for the elderly, since they are mostly retired.  Nixon did that.  That would also be true of the disabled, if we could accurately measure disability.  (The fact that we cannot partly explains the huge surge in disability, even as Americans are healthier than ever before.)

     "I guess Matt doesn’t understand sarcasm, or the phrase: “I’m actually more optimistic about the living standards of most poor people than the typical progressive. Their living standards have risen with the general population.” Or “Nixon did that.”  Nor has he read my post entitled “The Amazing Decline in American Poverty.” I presume he didn’t understand the sarcasm in the last sentence of my first paragraph, which in context was referring to what must be true if the progressive claim about no decline in poverty since the late 1960s were true.  Then I found this:

Again and again, he has called wealth inequality data “nonsense on stilts” because it ignores the fact that wealth inequality is just a life-cycle phenomenon.

    "Did I really say it was just a life cycle phenomenon?  Only a fool would believe such a thing.  Wealth inequality reflects many factors.  I searched and searched and could not find where I had said that.  Matt didn’t help me, as he linked to posts that did NOT say that.  Conclusion; Matt just made it up."

      http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=27684

      Brueing didn't make it up. Many others in the comments section have made the same point about Scott trying to boil down inequality to being mostly just about life cycle effects-he often claims that at some point in their lives most people are in all 5 income levels which obviously rests on the life cycle argument. 

       Now it's possible that Brueing somehow misunderstood Sumner. but if so, a lot of other people have made the same mistake which might suggest that Sumner is not overly endowed with the gift of clarity. Here is where I read him as talking about life cycle effects. 

    

       "I’ve done many posts explaining why public opinion polls of Americans on numerical questions are utterly meaningless.  The public is horrible at math, and their answers tell us almost nothing about what they actually believe.  One bogus poll that keeps getting touted by liberals claims to show that the American public has views on income distribution that are far to the left of those of Mao, perhaps even to the left of Pol Pot.  I don’t really know why liberals want to tout these poll results, as if this sort of policy regime were actually implemented we would all starve to death, just as many tens of millions starved in Cambodia and China under much less extreme attempts to impose equality."

       "Jordan Weissmann is the latest liberal to be sucked in by this nonsense:

Subjects estimated that the top 20 percent of U.S. households owned about 59 percent of the country’s net worth, whereas in the real world, they owned about 84 percent of it. In their own private utopia, subjects said that the top quintile would claim just 32 percent of the wealth. In fact, the ideal looked strikingly like Sweden.

      "If every single America had EXACTLY the same wealth at each age (i.e. all 20 year olds had identical wealth, as did all 55 year olds) then wealth inequality would still exceed the figures that Americans supposedly prefer, purely due to life cycle effects."

       http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=27648

      If that last paragraph has nothing to do with life cycle effects, I challenge you to tell me why. Brueing himself started a post with this missive:

       "I am not really sure what Scott Sumner is all about these days. Many years ago, he was like “monetary policy should utilize an NGDP target” and people were like “that’s an interesting thought.” But now, he’s kind of gone into mission creep mode where he comments on things that he’s not so knowledgeable on."

        http://mattbruenig.com/2014/09/29/cutting-poverty-is-super-easy/

        You know I'm not a Sumner fan, but I find this a rather superficial reading of him-much like Krugman dismissing Market Monetarists as not politically relevant. I might wish Krugman were correct but I think he's only defining relevance in a superficial way. 

       I don't think Sumner has really changed. I think this was always his modus operandi. He's always been quite explicit that his goal is to 'make the world safe for Neoliberalism again'-he uses this term which makes him a bit unique-not many Neoliberals actually call themselves a Neoliberal. 

           I don't think there's any 'mission creep'-as the mission was never simply to advocate monetary policy and let fiscal policymakers do what they will. His claims of a zero multiplier-or even negative multiplier-along with full monetary offset mean that he's not just a monetary advocate but a fiscal advocate as well. His argument is that if you follow his monetary prescriptions then we by default will end up with conservative supply side policies. This was always the playbook. That Brueing believed otherwise shows that Sumner is pretty good as he fooled him too. 

           Sumner's argument here is mostly quibbling.  Brueing is right when he points out that Sumner likes to confound the issue of poverty and middle class and median wage stagnation. I pointed out to Sumner that the War on Poverty was never really tried but was aborted in its infacy with the election of Nixon. His answer: 'so you're saying Brueing is wrong?'

           Another facile comment there. My point is neither to advocate nor take issue with Brueing but discuss the issue of the welfare state and poverty.  I don't think Brueing says that the welfare state has expanded since Reagan. If he did then he's wrong.