Response to Blinder

Blinder’s professed “answer” to economists’ woes about their natural lack of eloquence and inability to put into writing any of their “unlovely” and wart-covered scientific cases comes in the form of a book, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts. There is no modesty involved; Blinder sees examples such as economists’ weak influence in politics where it matters most and the Murphy’s law infecting the science as a centuries-long cry for help to propose the right policy recommendations from economists in a coherent and persuasive way to the rest. Economists agree (!), according to Blinder—they just need to be heard rightly.
After searching around, I found a bit of humility in the text, where he states that although the “crusade for better economic performance” doesn’t have a “lofty moral” which campaigns against injustices or the like—there is still a lot of value we glean from an efficiently run economic system (193). He suggests that when the economic system is successful in terms of efficiency and less bureaucracy, then it is easier to achieve other national social policy goals. Of course, this is an easy argument to make. It is like making the argument that if one part of a country is happy—it is easier to make the rest of the country happy. Meaning that a part of the solution getting solved is one step toward solving the entire solution—however I do not believe that pure economic efficiency in terms of policy-making and policy outcomes are a prerequisite to all other social goods. Many social goods are non-governmental including the services and products produced by non-profits and other private activity.
Another interesting point made by Blinder (which also happens to belittle politicians and put a feather in the cap of the economist) is where he explains that “negative-sum economic policies are often positive-sum political policies” meaning that politicians will sign on to less efficient policies because they create positive political gain (202). I’m not convinced that this is true across the board (in fact it would be a sad world if that were true); however, thinking about examples such as ethanol does make one want to agree with Blinder’s attitude at least in part. See article from 2005: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/19/tech/main709983.shtml Has ethanol caused more than 25% of the rise in food costs? Is producing ethanol inefficient and not worth spending energy and resources on? “Even if every bushel of U.S. corn, wheat, rice and soybean were used to produce ethanol, it would only cover about 4 percent of U.S. energy needs on a net basis, Washburn estimates.” See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_wasik&sid=aOS8e5kvDESE This example comes to mind when Blinder discusses special interest groups—and his solutions for interest group lobbying and manipulation of the political system may not be any more feasible than his theory about politicians is consistent.