Conservatives Pushing ‘Common Good Capitalism’ Sound a Lot Like Progressives

“Common good capitalism” is all the rage these days with national conservatives. But what exactly is it, you may ask? That’s a good question. As far as I can tell, it’s a lovely sounding name for imposing one’s preferred economic and social policies on Americans while pretending to be “improving” capitalism. If common good capitalism’s criticisms of the free market and prescriptions for its improvement were ice cream, it would be identical in all but its serving container to what much of the left has been dishing up for decades.

The wider adoption of the term Common Good Capitalism (CGC) can be traced back to a speech given by Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) at Catholic University in 2019. While there are different strains of common good capitalism, they all have in common the goal of producing a more balanced and stable economy that better serves the nation and its people.

The common good is, of course, a vague and subjective concept, the details of which are hard to pin down. Its advocates claim it’s an alternative form of conservative governance meant to promote things like tradition, workers’ dignity, religion, order, and families, rather than the singular free market focus of personal liberties and economic freedom. How exactly government policies will be used to mold capitalism into achieving these goals—many of which go further than economics—is unclear. This haziness explains why those defending common good capitalism usually do so only by listing what they see as wrong with the free market, rather than by giving their audiences specific details.

For instance, common-good advocates’ complaints about no-prefix capitalism often include excessive income inequality caused by greedy, cosmopolitan capitalists who heartlessly offshore jobs to low-wage foreign countries, or gripes about corporations somehow simultaneously charging monopolis