Max:
>
> I wasn't talking about feeling justified.
> I was talking about having a greater political
> impact. Details in this context, in my
> experience, heighten the interest of an
> audience because of their specificity.
> They also amplify the possibility that
> you are some kind of expert and may
> actually know what you are talking
> about (even if you don't).
>
I agree that "details heighten the interest of an audience" but you weren't talking about details, you were talking about "numbers." Jonathan Kozol presents plenty of details but not very many numbers, and I would argue that Savage Inequalities has had more political impact than any number of position papers from liberal think tanks. In terms of expert opinion, I agree that in an ideal world, having access to facts and sophisticated means of analysis should qualify one for expert status. In the real world, however, Rush Limbaugh appears on Nightline as an "expert" on the environment.
> In policy terms, information like this is
> a prerequiste to doing something. If I am
> promoting a wealth tax, let's say to replace
> some other tax I don't like, it helps to know
> how much revenue I can raise for a given tax
> rate.
>
Information is indeed a prerequisite for policy to move forward, but is it required that this information is "true" in any way? Take for example, the policy decision to increase defense budgets. No doubt these were based on "information" provided by acknowledged experts at the CIA that, for example, the Soviet's had succeeded in modernizing their weapons systems, were planning the installation of missiles in a) Turkey b) Cuba c) Nicaragua etc. The point is that expert opinion in foreign policy as well as in economics can always be counted on to serve power, even if a few principled scholars and economists make yeoman efforts to counteract the disinformation circulated by their brethren.
>
> Actually if you look at the Heritage and Cato web
> sites, you don't find all that much empirical work.
> Nothing remote approaching Citizens for Tax Justice
> tax modelling, or EPI's labor market work.
> There's a group in Texas with a comical econometric
> model. Mostly the right produces statements of
> doctrine. Of course, to some extent they don't
> need to. They have the Dallas Fed, for instance.
>
And has the economic policy of even the liberal Clinton admistration more closely reflected the priorities of EPI or the Heritage foundation? If the latter-and I think this is pretty much a no brainer-this doesn't make a very good case for the political influence gained by amassing huge amounts of data and sophiticated econometric models.
Best,
John