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> Almost literally everyone here is in favour of free markets
How does that fit in with single payer health care, rent control, universal basic income, calls for wealth taxes, calls to eliminate wealth "inequality", government football stadiums, government deciding who can play on sports teams, government funded TV, Amtrak, government subsidies, government bailouts, "you didn't build that", and, of course, the ever-increasing taxes and catastrophic amounts of spending?
The conservative economist Milton Friedman advocated for UBI in the form of a negative income tax.
UBI and free health care are fundamentally different.
> UBI in the form of a negative income tax
That's not UBI. UBI is everyone gets the same sum from the government.
But the more to the left the economy goes, the less prosperous it is, and there is a point when it comes unglued.
For myself as a Canadian, I can see that America is more “prosperous” in the sense that the averages on wealth and income look good, but I’ll take my socialized medicine and higher education thank you very much, not to mention median standard of living numbers.
The immigrants to the US were pretty much people with nothing but a suitcase. With the American free market, the country rose from subsistence farming to superpower. Scores of millions of people were lifted out of poverty into the middle class and beyond.
So to actually be provocative, I suggest that we set aside theoretical economic constructs and mention the hypothesis of Democracy itself.
Government itself becomes the consensus of the wealthy. And for any lesser hysteria, we can consider the uncomfortable lessons described in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". [1]
[1] _ https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm