Today in New York City, Capital Matters hosted a conference on “Innovation, Growth — And Their Newer Enemies.” Sponsored by National Review Institute, the conference featured leaders on economic thought speaking on the challenges and successes of free markets.
The conference opened with the 2022 William F. Buckley Jr. Prize winner, Larry Kudlow, giving a spirited defense of low taxes, low regulation, and the dignity that comes from work. An economy that encourages work helps keep families together, he said. “When you’re a kid, you’re supposed to see your dad come home from work. Or your mom, I don’t care — you’re supposed to see somebody come home from work,” Kudlow said.
One of the top barriers to job creation, unfortunately, is government. “Overregulation, overtaxation, and lack of access to credit” are the biggest barriers that small-business owners face, said Alfredo Ortiz of the Job Creators Network. He talked about how financial overregulation in the wake of the Great Recession has made it harder for small-business owners to access capital. “After Dodd-Frank, the big banks got bigger and community banks, which are mostly located in minority communities, went out of business,” he said.
Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration in the Trump administration, talked about the importance of small business in American communities. “You very rarely go to a Little League game and see BlackRock on the back of the jersey,” she joked. “It’s the local hardware store, the barbershop, or the nail salon that sponsors the teams.”
Capital Matters editor Andrew Stuttaford mentioned the Adam Smith 300 project, a celebration of Smith’s 300th birthday, which is June 16 of this year. Each table at the conference had a tent card with a quote from Smith on it and a blurb describing the essay series that Capital Matters is running to commemorate Smith’s life and thought. (See the first essay in the series here.)
Amity Shlaes of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation talked about the economic history of the 1920s and how the conservatives of that decade were able to unite above their previous factionalism. They did so not on the basis of personal charisma or deference to a particular leader, but based on a platform, she said. After the booming economic growth of the ’20s, “the different divisions among conservatives in their day forgot what they were even fighting about” a few years earlier, she said.
Capital Matters adviser Kevin Hassett spoke about the unique mission of Capital Matters. The project seeks to elevate the economic debate by eschewing name-calling and relying on evidence and strong arguments, he said. He talked about how institutions have been captured by the Left, and top universities and media outlets contain hardly any free-market voices. “Defenders of capitalism get smeared and marginalized, and that’s why we had to start Capital Matters,” he said.
Jason Trennert of financial research firm Strategas talked about the Fed’s “financial repression” of keeping interest rates artificially low for too long. “If you were just a regular guy with a savings account, you got zero,” he said. He also made clear the difference between being pro-market and pro-business. “One of the top beneficiaries of big government is big business,” he warned.
David Bahnsen of the Bahnsen Group and the Capital Record podcast closed with an appeal for unity among conservatives. “The populist debates we have right now are all resolved in restoring the human dignity of work,” he said. He expressed a mantra familiar to readers of NR when he said, “I believe that liberty and virtue are totally and always wedded. You can’t get one without the other.”
