Maybe because this thread is about a math PhD (Terrence Tao)?
I’m also surprised you believe academic economists have much power. These days, most politicians from both parties in the US proudly reject more or less all of mainstream economics. Sometimes, the work of academic economists can have some small influence on decisions at the Fed, so I guess that is something.
Sociologists don’t even have that. They’re more or less just talking to themselves.
If only politicians mattered why doesn't Trump sack virtually everyone in DC?
The government is a large organisation and its middle management is both vast and powerful.
And this huge middle management is obliged (arguably) to listen to academia unless otherwise instructed by politicians (who are too few in number and mostly not talented in steering large organisations so much as they are used to just going with the flow and taking the credit).
Do you have some specific examples of this phenomenon you would be willing to share? You seem to feel that academics have a lot of influence in the world, but I am extremely skeptical of this hypothesis. IME academics are generally ignored except when they are saying something we like. Or the corollary: we go find the academic that is saying the thing we like and ignore all the other ones.
If we take specifically the field of economics for a moment (since I know a bit about this one), what are examples of "middle managers" sticking to the recommendations of economists?
Because it's not hard to make a list of ideas that economists generally love and pretty much everyone else hates: paying organ donors, carbon taxes, land value taxes, charging for public parking, getting rid of minimum parking requirements, allowing surge pricing of various kinds, unilateral free trade, cash transfers instead of in-kind benefits, and abolishing the mortgage interest deduction. Honorable mention to congestion pricing, which economists of course love, but is interesting because support for it actually went up in NYC after implementation; support was pretty low before implementation.
Ok sure but can you point to even one instance anywhere of the will of politicians being subverted by “middle managers” (as you say) listening to academic economists? It doesn’t happen because no one listens to academics.
I’m confronting your assertion that academics have power in our society and you haven’t put forward any arguments that they do
Maybe because this thread is about a math PhD (Terrence Tao)?
I’m also surprised you believe academic economists have much power. These days, most politicians from both parties in the US proudly reject more or less all of mainstream economics. Sometimes, the work of academic economists can have some small influence on decisions at the Fed, so I guess that is something.
Sociologists don’t even have that. They’re more or less just talking to themselves.