Why Don't We Like the Free Market

According to public opinion polls, the public’s attitude toward the government's role in the economy has become, if not quite favorable, at least much more benign. In 1982, a Roper poll showed that 80 percent of Americans were described as hating deficits. By the end of that decade, similar polls showed a decline in this percentage and an increase in the number of people who believed that the primary responsibility for social issues rested with the federal government. The General Social Survey carried out by the University of Chicago since 1975 has included questions asking whether government should do more to solve our country’s problems, more to solve poverty problems, and whether responsibility for medical bills is the responsibility of the government in Washington. In 1975, 49 percent of all respondents agreed with the statement that help with medical bills was a responsibility of the federal government, 40 percent believed it a federal responsibility to help all poor Americans, and 38 percent felt that the federal government should do more to solve the country's problems. Support for the government’s involvement declined during the early 1980s, but has risen since. The Center for the Study of Policy Attitudes, found, in 1994, that 80 percent of Americans believe the government has the responsibility "to do away with poverty in this country." That is a ten percent growth since 1964. A Washington Post - ABC News poll in 1995 shows that 70 percent of Americans supported government involvement in all aspects of the economy. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 18, 1995, p.A8.)

The Pew Research found that in the United States the responses to the statement:

“ Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor.”

Spring 2007 Completely agree 25
Mostly agree 45
Mostly disagree 19
Completely disagree 5
Summer 2002 Completely agree 28
Mostly agree 44
Mostly disagree 14
Completely disagree 7

You can see that in the U.S. people in Spring 2007 were more in disagreement with the market system than was the case in 2007. But in both cases, notice how small the percentage of those who completely agree with the statement is. Just more than a quarter of the sample was complete in agreement.
And it is clearly not just the U.S. where these anti free market opinions exist. Even among those with new found freedom, the attitude toward the market economy has decreased since they first realized their freedoms. The Wall Street Journal November 3, 2009, posted a report on attitudes toward the economy by the former Soviet Union countries; it asked two times, once in 1991 just after the Berlin Wall fell, and again in 2009, what was the attitude toward the movement from centrally planned economy to market economy. The results in all formerly communist countries was that a larger percentage in the Fall of 2009 disapproved of the transition than had been the case in the Spring of 1991.

Why are attitudes toward the free market so negative? Economic theory has long shown that nothing works as well as the free market to allocate resources to their highest valued uses, to ensure that people get what they want and are able to purchase at the lowest possible prices, and that nothing matches the resulting growth in standards of living and opportunity.