What position do the liberals have with respect to a pure market economy?
Answer:
I dont know what the liberal position would be but the position the liberals want everybody else to be in is bent over touching their ankles. I am sure everybody knows what follows.
They don't like it becaue they want to control everything. A free market economy would mean they can't do that.
That depends on how you define liberal.
If you are talking midde of the road liberals then they would likely say that they like the idea of a pure market economy in theory, but that market failures such as the formation of monopolies, ellasticity of demand or supply problems, unfair competition in international markets that lead to "dumping" and many other problems all make a pure market economy impractical. Their solution is usually price controls or price supports in the form of subsidies and or taxes, as well as regulation. Externalities are handled with taxes as well as regulations, in the US for example the EPA regulates the environment polutants to reduce the negative external costs produced by manufacturers and energy producers. In a pure free market, no such agencies would exist.
On the other hand if you are dealing with a socailist or communist type liberal, then their point of view is not just that the free market is impractical, but that its actually an evil that exploits the worker and unfairly distributes income. Their focus is less on the economic efficiency of the market economy and mroe on the unequal distribution of income and wealth. They would point to figures like: that in US 10% of the population owns 83% of all wealth, or that 1% owns 34% of all wealth, and point to this as underisable and as proof of expoitation of the labor of the working class. Their solution is usually not price controls or regulation, but rather divestment of the wealth the rich now hold, and redistrbution to the lower classes in society, usually via the government.
So your answer depends how you define liberal. The more conservative liberals look at issues of a pure market system in terms of efficiency and they see solutions as regulation and controls on the economy. On the other hand the more hardcore liberals see the market as a social harm and want redistribution of wealth and income via centralized control of the economy as the answer.
First off there is no such thing as a pure market economy. Every economy has some degree of market intervention by the government.
For the most part "liberals" just believe in a little more governmental intervention than "conservatives." This will lead to more attention being paid to public goods, externalities, and how much fiscal and monetary policy intervention needs to occur.
This will lead liberals, in general, to be more concerned about the issue of unemployment. Conservatives tend to be more concerned about inflation as this creates arbitrary winners and losers due to the real interest rate behaving differently than the nominal interest rate.
Hope this helps.
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