Capitalism and Free Enterprise

Between 1964 and 2010, a number of surveys asked people if they agreed or disagreed with the statement:  "The government has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system."  The figure shows the percent who agreed minus the percent who disagreed. 

The smallest figure is from 1964, when 43% agreed and 40% agreed.  Since then, the average gap has been 30 percentage points.  The last time the question was asked, in March 2010, 58% said the completely or mostly agreed and 37% that they completely or mostly disagreed.  

I think that this question has implications for the claim that most people are to the left on economic issues, which I've discussed here.  Most people agree with the general principle that more should be done to help the poor and the middle class.  But the general sense that the government is already doing too much gives conservatives an argument that they can use against specific proposals, as they did with health care reform under Clinton and then again under Obama.  

While I was looking at this question, I noticed another:  "Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following. How about...free enterprise?"

                   Positive   Negative

 1/2010            86%       10%

11/2012           89%         7%

 5/2016            85%         9%

 7/2018            79%       17%

It's overwhelmingly positive at all times, but considerably less positive in 2018.  I can't find breakdowns by party, but I would guess most of the change is among Democrats, probably not because of a shift in fundamental beliefs, but just as a reaction against everything that Republicans say they support.  

Finally, Bret Stephens had a column in the NY Times in which he criticized John Hickenlooper for being unwilling to say that he was a "proud capitalist" and suggested that reluctance to embrace the term "capitalism" could cost the Democrat the 2020 election.  But "capitalism" is an educated person's term--college graduates are strongly favorable, less educated people are pretty evenly divided.  (Numbers are here and here).  Stephens also said that in the past "one of the reasons why the right-wing charge of “socialism” against the Democratic Party rarely stuck was that it was generally untrue."  In fact, it did stick, but people didn't care very much:  in 1965, 36% thought that America's economic system was "capitalism" and 34% thought it was "socialism" (the rest weren't sure).  That's probably because "socialist" has been applied to any kind of redistribution or government intervention.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]