Is it me or has the free market economy sort of backfired?

[Genius19998]

I come from the UK where people are on average experiencing a 30% drop in their living standards. Social mobility is weaker now than it was in 60s and inequality has grown. Yet we were led to believe that a free market economy is the best thing for society!

One thing I cannot understand is why costs are going up yet people's income isn't rising at the same rate? Surely these prices set by the market are illogical? Wouldn't it make more sense to lower prices, that way businesses would sell more and more people could buy them? Why doesn't Britain have a conscious anymore? What's wrong with making travel, goods and housing more affordable?

[The_Mighty_JPB]

There is no free market. There are no "prices set by the market". Everything is regulated. Everywhere. Yet we still feed our own delusion that we have free markets. Some of us do it because we like Capitalism and want to feel free. Some of us do it because we don't like Capitalism and want to blame it for our problems.

Maybe there was a free market when the "Western Capitalism experiment" began, for about 5 minutes, before we started regulating it.

[Robert Jameson]

'The_Mighty_JPB' is right. There are no free markets. Even if a particular market is not directly and specifically regulated, it is still massively affected by the knock-on effects of regulations in other markets. The free market doesn't fail, because we never give it a chance to. The government repeatedly uses alleged 'market failure' as an excuse to interfere further in the markets, but the failures they refer to are usually the result of the government's own failures. They tax and regulate so heavily that the market never gets a chance to work properly!

[Aleconomixt]

Problem with US is that it is spending more than earning.
Problem with UK is it is not earning. Yes, over 50 years UK has traveled a lot downhill.
UK needs complete revival of outlook like Japan.
UK need to adopt high self-sufficiency, shunned stock exchange, support to State than "Economy."
The rat race which capitalism set in , is going to have many victims.
A country with 50% tax on salaries and 26% on corporate profits , makes people what they are today.

Problem with west is, generations have been brain-washed into believing that capitalism made their lives comfortable - No, it was imperialism of this sort or that. See how they are crazy for free market even in disaster !!!

[The MopPetal]

I agree with The_Mighty_JPB. If there was a free market then there would be no regulations imposed by a centralized government or other state. That is not to say that there wouldn't be any regulations at all though. I'm sure that In a 100% free market the consumers within each market might have certain demands. For example, in a hypothetical 100% free market the consumers within the fast food industry might want to make sure they're food is safe to eat and they might advocate for different ways of making sure the food is safe to eat. If a fast food restaurant doesn't want to comply with these "regulations" that the consumers want then the consumers will just go to other restaurants that will comply with the "regulations". There is no need for the force that government uses via regulations.

[simplicitus]

You are right, and it has happened in the U.S. too. The deregulation that started in the 1980s in the U.S. created a boom, but almost all the gains went to the rich:
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/pages/interactive
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/02/10/inco...over-time/
http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/01/31/the-...ecoupling/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11...-for-whom/
http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/p...terIII.pdf
Income inequality in the U.K. is not as high as in the U.S., but the same trend is clearly visible:
http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/comm124.pdf
And, to make things worse, you voted in a Conservative government that has destroyed the economy with its austerity measures:
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/03/2...-reduction
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/co...-work.html
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/01/th...ssion.html

But yes, it is all about government policies that have been favoring the rich
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile.../gini.html