I am doubtful whether the free market exists anywhere in the world (please correct me if I am wrong). My theory is that whenever it tends to exist, a few corrupt players (government or private) will tend to game the system and take all the riches for themselves and the market will not be free any more. That is because the Econ 101 which free market theorists tend to talk about does not take into account human psychology which is far more important.

The alternative is a shared sense of social well-being(not socialism or communism) with healthy government intervention, rather than individualism which Americans seem to be fond of. I would accept a lower GDP where people are happy (subjective) over the American way of life any day.

Then why do free market systems produce by far the greatest standard of living as compared to any other system? To the degree that countries use the free market, they're prosperous, it's that simple.

If you were right, Hong Kong would have been impossible.

People like to reference Scandinavia. Well, Swedes in the US possess a higher standard of living than Swedes living in Sweden do.

And Sweden's modern boom the last two decades was produced by a shift toward the free market, rather than away from it. Previously it was mired in a long-term stagnation brought on by heavy welfare state policies.

The free market version of the Untied States produced the first, and by far the largest, true middle class in world history. There isn't even a close second. Prior to the the US abandoning the free market system 40 years ago, it was basically at the top of the pile in nearly every metric, from education to savings to growth to upward mobility to standard of living; along with an amazing college system that was affordable, and an affordable healthcare system that was the best in the world.

If the welfare state worked, it wouldn't be collapsing rapidly all around the planet. The debt piled up faking prosperity under the welfare state system has begun to come due, and all those gains that were pulled forward to pretend the system worked, are eroding.

I disagree with many statements, but I want to focus on two:

> why do free market systems produce by far the greatest standard of living as compared to any other system

What other system do you mean? I don't see two systems to choose from. Every wealthy nation and most poor ones have a 'free market' system with some social welfare programs. The question is what degree of social welfare do we want to provide?

> The debt piled up faking prosperity under the welfare state system has begun to come due

In fact Western economies grew enormously in the last 40 years. The U.S.'s recent debt and economic problems are because of reckless governance:

When Bill Clinton left office the government was running a surplus and the economy was growing. Under the Bush administration, the Republicans (and the blame falls heavily on them this time, there's no point in being falsely even-handed):

* Cut revenue (taxes) significantly

* Greatly increased costs unnecessarily by invading Iraq

* Greatly increased costs unnecessarily by failing to regulate the financial sector, resulting in the worst economic catastrophe since WWII. This greatly impacted revenue (reduced economic activity reduces tax receipts) and expenses (increasing demand for social welfare, and bailing out critical industries).

* Malpractice in governance, attempting even to default on the credit of the United States to score a political point!

Balancing the budget with excellent economic performance and social welfare policies was and is possible. We did it under Clinton. If you greatly both cut revenue and increase costs, and conduct malpractice in governance, then yes you will have a lot of debt and other problems.

Really? adventured says the US left the free-market system forty years ago and you reply with criticism against Bush?

I agree that there are no free market systems anywhere and that corruption is a huge problem. That's universal and not just related to healthcare.

I would say that another alternative would be full transparency in costs and prices, that way the public can understand what they are paying for. One example is an Oklahoma City surgery center showing their prices online for all to see. http://kfor.com/2013/07/08/okc-hospital-posting-surgery-pric...

Ultimately I have no faith in what the US is doing, mainly because it's the same problem all around: the government get's involved in a negative way, then years later claims it's the only thing to fix the problem by becoming more involved. Yet it never actually address's the issues from the beginning.