Huckabee against the robber barrons?

October 10, 2007 – 10:31 am

Last night, I was really struck by Mike Huckabee’s language on economics. Let’s go to the transcript for a moment:

Mr. Huckabee: The real fact is, unions are going to take a more prominent role in the future for one simple reason: A lot of American workers are finding that their wages continue to get strapped lower and lower while CEO salaries are higher and higher.

And the reality is that when you have the average CEO salary 500 times the average worker, and you have the hedge fund manager making 2,200 times that of the average worker, you’re going to create a level of discontent that’s going to create a huge appetite for unions.

So unions are the natural result of workers finally saying, "Look, I can’t go from a $70,000 year job to a $15,000 a year job and feed my family of four." That’s when unions are going to come back in roaring form.

Does Mike Huckabee think that the financial services industry is today’s robber barrons? Is he right? Certainly in a post-industrial economy, there’s an analogy between railroads and financial services, even if it is somewhat strained.

I contrast this with John Edwards. He targets the rich. Huckabee may be targeting Wall Street. That’s a difference. Perhaps an important one. What would Huckabee have to say about the housing crisis?

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Democrat primary calendar about more than diversity

August 24, 2006 – 8:32 am

A professor at the University of New Hampshire has an interesting op-ed in today’s WaPo about the New Hampshire Primary and the recent shift of the primary schedule by the Democrats. A lot of attention has been focused on the racial/diversity issue, which was the argument that the DNC used to move up Nevada. But the point that I found interesting was this:

But unlike Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, New Hampshire has a strong, broad-based economy with a significant concentration of high-tech companies and global exporters. In many respects its economy represents the nation’s (hoped-for) economic future. It’s a very good place for candidates to test out economic ideas and principles and to learn from workers and entrepreneurs.

In the past quarter-century, New Hampshire’s economy has been transformed. Its economic base has changed from traditional manufacturing to concentration in high technology and skilled professional services. It has improved in rank among the states in per capita income from 25th to sixth. It has been the strongest economic performer in New England, with the region’s fastest growth rates in employment, gross state product and exports. New Hampshire consistently has among the lowest rates of unemployment and poverty.

This is in contrast with Nevada, whose caucuses are dominated by the hotel workers union, according to Hotline’s Chuck Todd:

[Edwards] close ties to the hotel labor workers give him an interesting leg up in Nevada.

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Consider the first three states in the Democratic schedule: two are caucuses (Iowa and Nevada) whose very nature favors liberals (Nevada also proved how liberal its primary electorate is in their most recent primary for governor) …

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Rants against New Hampshire aside, there seems to be one giant unintended consequence of this early primary calendar jiggering: shifting the Democratic primary balance of power to the left.

As for electability, Edwards should be considered too liberal to win a general.

In other words, the new schedule emphasizes the low-skilled service workers at the expense of high-skilled aspirational information workers. And it favors economic populists over candidaes more in touch with aspirational voters.

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Online markets prefer Edwards to Clinton in the general

August 21, 2006 – 1:09 pm

H/T to Greg Mankiw for the analysis.

The GOP markets at Tradesport only have McCain and Giuiliani, so I don’t think that they are very meaningful. But Mankiw points out what is interesting about the Democrat ones:

[W]e can obtain for each candidate the conditional probability–the probability that the person will win the general election if nominated. Here are the results:Clinton 48.3
Edwards 57.3

Note the relative performance of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Although Clinton is more likely to end up President than Edwards is, Edwards is more likely to win the general election conditional on being nominated. At least that’s what the market says.

I think that jives with most people’s understandings. I also think, looking at some of the other stuff on there, that there’s some room for arbitrage…

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Iowa State Fair Straw Polls Results: McCain wins; Clinton and Edwards tie

August 17, 2006 – 9:50 pm

GOP side:

  1. John McCain: 24%
  2. Rudy Giuiliani and Condi Rice: 20%
  3. Newt Gingrich: 10%

Dem side:

  1. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards tied at 34%
  2. Vilsack third.

Upshot: McCain is still the front runner. And Hillary just can’t go that high, we think.

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