Robert MacCulloch: Will Chief Executive Officer Chris Luxon successfully transition into Prime Minister Chris Luxon?

Newshub and other Mainstream Media outlets are back trying to brew up trouble for the incoming PM - the angle they seem to be developing now is that Luxon is going to try running NZ like a company. A panelist on the AM Show said, "However, some of the language that Chris Luxon is using around Parliament, I can't help but listen to him and hear him talking like he's managing a company rather than a country and rather than a Parliament and that scares me a little bit. [It] doesn't sit quite right with me."

It's actually an old question, having been hugely debated when Donald Trump went from being a CEO to a President. The heavy hitters weighed in on the pros and cons of such a transition - and they're worth listening to.

First up is former Chairman of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers and Head of the Harvard Economics Department, Greg Mankiw, who took exception to Trump trying to interfere in day-to-day business decisions of corporate America when he was President. He argues there is a big difference between a CEO and a political leader. Mankiw says that whereas a CEO is the "central planner" for their firm, a President or PM should not be a central planner for their nation - the leader of a country like the US or NZ should set up the rules and then let individual business leaders make decisions for their own firms. Whether Mr Luxon sees himself in this way - namely as the one setting up laws, rules & regulations (and we are hope, not too interventionist ones) without interfering in other ways is still an open question. Mankiw makes this argument 1 minute 55 seconds into this video.

Next up is Elon Musk who argues that effectively the President is the Chief Executive Officer of the US - he's in charge of the Executive Branch - and Musk is all on for a person who is great at making executive decisions to being the boss of America. Bring it on, he says, at 1 minute 20 seconds into this video.

Sources
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/10/mental-health-advocate-says-language-christopher-luxon-is-using-sounds-like-he-s-managing-company-not-country.html 

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.