There's a disturbing assumption that progressives tend to accept when it comes to discussion about economics. Progressives are said to favour government intervention while conservatives tend to favour market outcomes. This line has set the standard framework for a great deal of debate over the years, but there is one small problem with it: it is total nonsense.

The evidence against this line of reasoning is transparently obvious when one examines the economic policies over the last few decades, especially with the ascendancy of rightwing political parties since the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was argued, as it is today, that if societies accept the standard fare of neoclassical economics – deregulation, flexible labour markets, reducing government intervention, greater competition – then entire populations would be better off. But regardless of what one may think about conventional economic theory, the actual policies put in place by the right are often diametrically opposed to the rhetoric.

Take the issue of free trade, for instance. It is commonly argued that reducing tariffs and quotas will result in cheaper goods, increasing consumer welfare. Fair enough. But what about the following three forms of trade protectionism: intellectual property rights (IPR), criminalisation of drugs and a lack of trade in highly paid professional services?

IPR represents a radical form of statist intervention (patent office, patent enforcement, research and development subsidies, tax breaks, monopolistic pricing, and the inevitable colossal subsidy programs, etc) when there exist more efficient models for financing research and development that adopt free market outcomes. Patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets saturate modern economies – a form of interventionist redistribution to the corporate elite through enormous unearned monopoly rents. The policies regarding criminalised drugs constitute another extensive form of intervention that requires a strong state to deny liberties, provide onerous expenditures for law enforcement and creates enormous consumer welfare losses. The real winners are drug cartels.

Likewise, it is obvious that goods can be produced more cheaply where labour costs are lower and rights are next to nonexistent. Yet the point that, rarely, if ever, gets made is that highly paid professionals are cheaper to educate in these countries than in wealthier western countries. Free trade in professional labour such as executives, managers, lawyers, doctors, engineers would likely produce enormous gains for consumers. Instead, we have a free movement of capital but the regulation of labour. Moderate and low-income jobs are free to be outsourced, but what about the highly paid jobs that can't?

Meanwhile, corporations have rights, over and above that of people, which constitutes a massive attack against classical liberal and traditional conservative thought. It was held by conservatives such as Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt that rights should be granted only to individual persons, not to institutions such as nation states and corporations. They would be rolling about in their graves should they have learned that corporations have been granted the rights of immortal persons.

Smashing labour unions while not atomising capital is another protectionist policy that favours the business class – economic theory requires that both sides be atomised. Lipsey and Lancaster's general theory of second best is ignored, stating that a move towards liberalisation may in fact be a step backwards unless a commensurate change is made.

There are other rigged nanny-state policies too numerous to go into detail: central banking, bailouts, below-market rate loans, bankruptcy laws, military expenditures, rent-seeking, the too big to fail doctrine, cost-externalisation, torts and takings, and so on. These policies are the staple of what is misleadingly called "neoliberalism", but it is not new and has very little to do with markets. The economist and Cif contributor Dean Baker has written a book about this (available for free) called The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, which outlines some of these policies that are used to redistribute society's wealth to the rich. Baker calls those who advocate markets but receive protectionism instead as "nanny state conservatives". Leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are held up as divine apostles of the free market, but it takes little effort to show that they were in favour of policies that protect the rich but subject the bulk of the population to freer markets.

Terms such as "free market capitalism" and "free trade" are frequently used by progressives to falsely describe the policies of the right. Outside a margin of rightwing libertarians who tend to be more honest in such debate, the mainstream right is decidedly dishonest about promoting their policies, to great effect. There are many areas of the economy that would benefit from freer markets which would dispossess the wealth of the rich, and progressives should be in favour of them. They should stop giving conservatives the upper hand in debates by adhering to this traditional line and instead make it known that the right are very much in favour of government intervention – it is readily apparent that government is always too big, except for the rich.