The Case for and against Central Bankers
Monetary policy makers set the stage for inflation but were slow to respond when it appeared.
The Case for and against Central BankersConventional Wisdom: A Binary Choice
- By
- July 21, 2016
- CBR - Public Policy
Sometime after 3 p.m., a sound that sits uncomfortably between a rifleshot and a small bomb echoes across Cleveland Public Square. Everyone stops and looks east up Euclid Avenue. Then a few souls shake loose and begin heading in the sound’s direction. They’re slow at first but soon slip into an uneasy trot when the numbers grow and the state police join them, as if the greatest fear of the assembly is missing a second blast.
Mercifully, the noise turns out to be benign, and there is no follow-up. But the empty square provides an excellent opportunity for the enterprising and brash. It’s seized by a small group, college students mostly, waving handmade signs in the direction of the remaining cameras: Taxation Is Theft, I ♥ Capitalism, and Socialism Sucks.
The strident messages are a bit jarring in contrast to the clean-cut appearance of the kids, who at a distance look like an impromptu gathering of Junior Rotarians. I engage one, Christian Costa, when she takes a breather from engaging the hecklers. She’s a undergraduate at Clemson, and she informs me that she and the others are members of Turning Point USA, a national organization which, according to its website, is a “Student Movement for Free Markets and Limited Government.” We talk for a few minutes until I ask her what she thinks of Donald Trump’s flirtation with protectionism. She quickly notes that Turning Point is nonpartisan but acknowledges that she will vote for him.
Turning Point USA demonstrator Christian Costa
When I later raise the same question with Charlie Kirk, the executive director of the organization, he echoes Costa, but with the caveat that his support comes “with a high degree of skepticism.” Still, elections are a “binary choice,” he says, and while he is dismayed by the GOP nominee’s free-trade heresies—“I’d love to see Donald Trump build a building with protectionist policies”—between him and Hillary Clinton, the choice seems clear to Kirk.
Even if voters have gotten used to regarding elections as the selection of the lesser of two evils, this election may be particularly vexing to those whose only demand of free markets is that they remain free. In the postscarcity age of American politics, major-party candidacy requires negotiating the high-wire act of promising both economic growth and equitable prosperity. Trump, for instance, advocates free trade, as long as America wins at it.
There is, perhaps, a third choice for the electorate, an alternative to both Clinton and Trump. Back on the square, the Turning Point kids have just started their chanting when an agitated young man engages them. With his wire-rimmed glasses and stringy, disheveled hair, he looks like either a refugee from Occupy Wall Street or an acolyte of Bernie Sanders. In fact, he is an anarchist. “If you want to end government, you have to end the state,” he tells them in a voice that seems enraged less by the error of others than their being so bull-headed. Not surprisingly, the college students seem unconvinced.
The Conventional Wisdom series features John Paul Rollert’s dispatches from the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions. You can see more Conventional Wisdom posts here. If you want to engage the discussion, tweet John Paul @jprollert.
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