Elizabeth Warren must not be looking very hard if she can't see that the free market is rigged in favor of working families

From JOHN MERLINE of INVESTORS.com. 

"Is the economy rigged against the middle class? The Democratic left's dream candidate -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- thinks so.

"I see evidence everywhere of the pounding working people are taking," Warren said on Wednesday at an AFL-CIO summit on raising wages. "These families are working harder than ever, but they can't get ahead. Many feel that the game is rigged against them, and they are right. The game is rigged against them."

Her argument, of course, is that the government must intervene to level the playing field.
But Warren must not be looking very hard if she can't see that the free market is rigged in favor of working families, not against them.

As economist Mark Perry loves to point out on his Carpe Diem blog, market competition has dramatically driven down the cost of the goods and services we buy, while vastly improving their quality.

In a recent post, for example, he shows how the efficiency of today's appliances is as much as 217% greater than what was available in 1981, which "translate into significant energy cost savings for American households."

Better still, these appliances cost less than they did in 1981, especially when measured in "time cost" -- or how many hours the average worker would need to work to buy one.

A 1981 dishwasher would have required 48.5 hours of work to buy, Perry calculates. A comparable dishwasher today requires just 17 hours of work. That's a 65% drop in price for an appliance which is more than twice as efficient.

"Thanks to advances in technology and worker productivity," Perry explains, "American consumers get cheaper and better manufactured goods (appliances, cars, clothing, food, and household furnishings) year after year, which translates into a higher standard of living for all Americans, especially for lower and middle-income households."

Does this look like a rigged game to you?

If anything, the parts of the economy that are rigged against working families are those where government has intruded the most.

As IBD pointed out recently, the states with the highest levels of income inequality also tend to be the most left-wing. Even the liberal Brookings Institution concluded that San Francisco is the second most unequal city in the country.

Study after study has found that overregulation increases costs, kills jobs and stifles innovation. And it's always the middle class that bears the brunt of these adverse side effects.

It's worth noting, too, that it has been under President Obama's tax-and-regulate economic policies -- most of which Warren heartily supports -- that middle-class incomes fell, millions quit looking for work, and millions more sank into poverty.

Advocating a bigger dose of the poison is no way to cure the patient."