Free markets have always been more than a policy preference for American conservatism. They were the pillar, a load-bearing idea that separated the American right from every other political tradition on earth, the belief that liberty and prosperity rise or fall together. And yet that pillar is beginning to crumble, among Democrats, among Americans, and even among conservatives.
It is no longer just Democrats who have lost faith in capitalism.
According to a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal, only 48 percent of Americans believe capitalism is working either very well or somewhat well, and that number only worsens the younger you go. Fifty-six percent of Americans ages 65 and up still have faith in capitalism, itself a surprisingly low number for the generation that benefited from it most. Only 48 percent of those ages 50-64 feel the same. The figure falls further among those 35-49, standing at just 46 percent, and bottoms out at 42 percent among Americans ages 18-34, meaning that in every single generation alive today, more Americans doubt capitalism than believe in it.
Exclusive: Americans’ confidence in capitalism and democracy has fallen sharply, according to a new WSJ-NORC poll https://t.co/DR6TZVhYif
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) July 8, 2026
And the skepticism runs deeper than a verdict on the economic system alone. Around 75 percent of Americans believe billionaires and large businesses have too much power in Washington and that “working people” have too little. And 52 percent now say corporate power comes at the expense of workers and consumers, and that government should limit its influence, or even take a direct stake in some businesses.
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It hardly matters what reasoning people give for wanting government to regulate business. Whether the target is tech, health insurance, higher education, or manufacturing, the underlying ideology is identical, and the lack of faith in the market is becoming impossible to ignore.
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
— Milton Friedman Quotes (@MiltonFriedmanW) May 22, 2026
— Milton Friedman pic.twitter.com/5eTKuKaWVn
This shift has been driven not only by years of dissatisfaction with the American economy, which, it should be said, is not truly a free market to begin with, and a growing socialist wing on the left, but by something closer to home: the willingness of conservative and Republican politicians to play the game of economics on the socialists' own terms.
President Trump has spent time blasting American gas companies for allegedly gouging consumers, a demonstrably false claim. Vice President JD Vance has declared that the economics of Milton Friedman are something conservatives should no longer turn to, reaching instead for "Hamiltonian economics" that require far greater federal command over the economy. And a broader instinct has taken hold among conservatives that AI should face sweeping regulation, one that risks squandering genuine technological innovation over largely speculative concerns.
None of this makes any single conservative a socialist. But it does mean conservatives are inching toward the same instinct they have spent a lifetime warning against: the belief that government, not the market, should decide who wins.
Democrats may never have learned the lesson of the Soviet Union's collapse. It would be a shame if conservatives forgot it, too, because the road that leads to a command economy rarely announces itself as socialism. It begins, quietly, with the government deciding it knows better than the market. History has seen that road before, and it always ends the same way.
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