When GlobeScan began tracking views in 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw the free market as the best economic system for the future–the highest level of support among tracking countries. Support started to fall away in the following years and recovered slightly after the financial crisis in 2007/8, but has plummeted since 2009, falling 15 points in a year so that fewer than three in five (59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.
GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller commented: “America is the last place we would have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system. This is not good news for business.”
The results mean that a number of the world’s major emerging economies have now matched or overtaken the USA in their enthusiasm for the free market. The Chinese and Brazilians, 67 percent of whom regard the free market system as the best on offer, are now more positive about capitalism than Americans, while enthusiasm in India now equals that in the USA, with 59 percent rating the free market as the best system for the future.
Among the 20 countries polled in both 2009 and 2010, an average of 54 percent today rate the free market economy as the best economic system, unchanged from 2009.
Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 percent to 44 percent between 2009 and 2010. American women have also become much less positive, with 52 percent backing the free market in 2010, down from 73 percent in 2009.
via Sharp Drop in American Enthusiasm for Free Market, Poll Shows – World Public Opinion, 4/6/2011.
My guess is that these numbers could easily be reversed with higher taxes on the rich, a more equal distribution of the wealth and of productivity gains, as well as more democratic corporate governance. A free market that allows the vast majority of its population to fail or stagnate, while the wealth of the top 1% soars, is not going to win any popularity contests. What are we waiting for?
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