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Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years. Americans remain more negative (57%) than positive (39%) toward socialism, with little movement in these attitudes over time.

When we talk about the minimum wage, we are referring to the minimum amount an employer is required to pay an employee for each hour worked. In other words, the minimum wage is not a maximum wage, nor does it necessarily represent the wage that every employer must pay in all cases.

Free-market capitalism remains the best system ever discovered for human flourishing. Yet political support for it is wavering— and that should alarm anyone who cares about prosperity and freedom.

Zohran Mamdani, the person who defeated Cuomo in the primaries and is now seen as a mayoral contender for New York – the beating heart of capitalism – recently declared in an interview: ‘I don’t think we should have billionaires.’

The United States should not only stand its ground in the Western Hemisphere but also lead it to a new era of freedom and prosperity.

Our world is the freest and most prosperous that has ever existed, billions have been plucked out of secular misery by modest advances of freedom in production and trade, while more men live today under regimes of extensive freedom than ever before in history, but with few exceptions, in developed or backward countries, most men are anxious to surrender their freedom in exchange for equality and security, although they have overwhelming evidence that the only equality they would obtain, were they to achieve it, would be that of misery in which the only certainty is that they would be forced to worship the chains of their own slavery.

For many Americans, the present economic circumstances feel uneasy, and the future feels worse. They direct their anxiety at other countries, which are supposedly taking advantage of us through trade, or at artificial intelligence, with its potential to upend jobs and concentrate power. Lawmakers respond by offering antitrust, industrial and trade policies.

The Washington State Legislature recently passed House Bill 1217, often referred to as the “Residential Landlord-Tenant Act,” or the “Housing Stability Act.” The legislation was delivered to Governor Ferguson on April 27 and is still awaiting signature.

Last month, the new Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson announced a new task force aimed at investigating behavior that harms workers. Although much of the focus seemed like a retread from previous chair Lina Khan, a renewed scrutiny of occupational licensing is welcome news.

America is now in a moment of choosing. Our markets are under siege from interventionist proposals on both the left and right, coupled with impending fiscal, entitlement, and regulatory crises bequeathed by a legacy of such policies.