The link, which has further explanation, is here. Chris’s prediction markets blog is here.
The pointer is from Chris Masse
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Winslow Theramin: you might find all sorts of things happen, such as a refusal to regulate financial markets properly causing economic chaos in the US…
Don’t get too excited about the majority of Americans supporting the “free market.” From the article:
I blame the decline in the popularity of free markets at least in part on people associating bad actions (Iraq war) of unpopular self-described conservatives (George Bush) with an historical association of conservatives with free markets.
a strong governmentally regulated free market? …doesn’t that equate to…umm…not equating?
Tyler-
This is a joke, isn’t it? Two questions in the poll, the first of which is “et) The free enterprise system and free market economy work best in society’s interest when accompanied by strong government regulations.”. Do you think they might be looking for a particular answer?
The world must be waking up to the historical fact that British and American economic supremacy evolved on the back of massive protectionism and government intervention.
We only embraced free markets once we won the battle of development.
Source:
“Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism” by Ha-Joon Chang (2005 Leontief Prize Winner)
fundamentalist, you’d also have to include protection of the property of the rich from theft by the poor. Of course, most rich people in market economies give away a lot of money, but thats not necessarily part of a free market system.
While this survey is interesting, I don’t think it indicates any real preferences on the part of the public. They’ve been told Bush is “pro-market” while democrats are not, when in fact Clinton was likely more pro-market than Bush. The media labels failure in nearly any industry as a fault of “the market”, while nearly all of the failures occur in heavily nationalized sectors (when was the last time we heard about a crisis in anything except finance/investment/banking and health care?).
Of course, if you tell them free markets mean open immigration, they probably wouldn’t like them at all.
I didn’t take time to read the article, but I find it interesting that the trend is clearly down at the same time global equity markets and economic growth are up. Maybe an increasing dissatisfaction with, or awareness of, the “wealth / income gap?” Please note that I’m not commenting on the gap per-se.
Just a thought.
OK, let’s assume for a second that this is true. It still doesn’t say anything about the possibly more extensive protectionism and government intervention in other states. Either you’re bad at citing your sources, or Chang doesn’t realize that things like these need comparisons. Perhaps Spain, Italy, Prussia, etc. had more barriers to trade.
Even then, correlation is not causation.
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