Sumner's Monetarism Stems From His Contempt for Democracy

     Again with his claim that the public is too ignorant to have an opinion on complex issues of policy-outside of these issues he's fine with the public having an opinion.

     "I frequently argue that public opinion polls on complex policy issues are almost meaningless.  (Although polls can be useful for predicting election outcomes.)  It all depends on the framing.  Here’s another study that reached the same conclusion:

We presented respondents with two different education plans, the details of which are unimportant in this context. What is important is that half the sample was told A was the Democratic plan and B was the Republican plan, while the other half of our national sample was told A was the Republican plan and B was the Democrats’ approach.
The questions dealt with substantive policy on a subject quite important to most Americans — education — and issues that people are familiar with — class size, teacher pay and the like.

Nonetheless, when the specifics in Plan A were presented as the Democratic plan and B as the Republican plan, Democrats preferred A by 75 percent to 17 percent, and Republicans favored B by 13 percent to 78 percent. When the exact same elements of A were presented in the exact same words, but as the Republicans’ plan, and with B as the Democrats’ plan, Democrats preferred B by 80 percent to 12 percent, while Republicans preferred “their party’s plan” by 70 percent to 10 percent. Independents split fairly evenly both times. In short, support for an identical education plan shifted by more than 60 points among partisans, depending on which party was said to back it.

    "Most polls on policy questions report little more than mood affiliation."

     http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29567#comments

     Ok, it's all just mood affiliation. I wonder if he believes that he has any such affiliation. I think this oft-repeated belief of his is related to why he hates fiscal policy vs. monetary policy for dealing with demand shortfalls and stabilization.

    I mean you can argue that he too suffers from these very same 'framing effects.' After all he'll support the very same policy if it's labeled 'monetary' and handled by the Fed rather than if it's done by the Treasury and called 'fiscal.'

   However, what shows that he certainly isn't free of such framing effects is the way he has set himself up as the biggest Dennis Hastert defender in the country.

  
   "Update:  Here’s how Yahoo describes the charges against Dennis Hastert:

Hastert pleads not guilty in hush money case
The former House Speaker is accused of agreeing to paying $3.5M to hide past misconduct claims

    "Interesting that the American press is so ashamed of our country that they refuse come right out and say that it can be illegal to withdraw cash from your own bank account, and instead feel a need to make up lies about Hastert being charged with paying hush money."

     http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29567#comments

     As usual Sumner shows himself how to make heavy weather over some very narrow hair splitting-the specific charges are for him engaging in bank fraud rather than paying the hush money; but, he committed bank fraud in order to pay the hush money. 

    So how's that for framing? Framing is how all these conservatives think that Hastert of all people is the poster boy for civil liberties-this from the man who led the Puritanical freak show against Clinton in the 90s.

    Only framing effects are responsible for Sumner's impassioned defense for the pretty much indefensible.

    It may be that the framing effects are intensified by the fact that Hastert is from Sumner's state of Massachusetts-perhaps he was his Congressman. Maybe they no each other personally. Whatever the case these are some really severe framing effects.

    Think about it. To save Hastert's sorry hide, Sumner wants to do away with:

     1. Age of consent laws-Hastert had an affair with an underage male student in 1985 at a high school.

     2. Laws against perjury. Sumner now thinks there should be no penalty for lying under oath if it's just to conceal something embarrassing: like that you slept with an underage male student when you were his wrestling coach.

     3. Bank fraud.

     If all this special pleading were successful this would show us once and for all that the Hasterts of the world are simply above the laws the rest of us have to follow.

     P.S. Sumner's whole point about public opinion in economics stems from his desire for economic decisions to be made by economic technocrats with his same prejudices.

    In his piece on National Review Online the other day, we saw that based on Sumner's idealized idea of how the market works-if you keep the government out of the economy there shouldn't be any inequality problem-he basically doesn't even agree with the Sherman Act.

    During the 30s economists warned that the minimum wage is a job killer but the public and it's' politicians ignored them. Basically, Sumner hasn't liked the way economic policy has been conducted since the 1890s; no wonder he hates public opinion when it wades into economics.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/sumner-on-how-capitalism-is-supposed-to.html