In November, the BBC released a survey of almost 30,000 people around the world about their views of capitalism. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the much vaunted “victory” of capitalism, those responding to the survey had mixed reviews of free market capitalism. That might not surprise many in the U.S., but what does surprise is that only 25% of respondents in the U.S. thought that capitalism was working well.
Over half of those surveyed thought that regulation and reform could help solve capitalism’s problems. Two thirds of respondents wanted governments to take a greater role in redistributing wealth.