"Progressive"...towards what?

Society? So you're saying that the purpose of "society" is to "provide for one owns self" (whatever that means) and for family. I think I agree but your meaning isn't very clear.

Sooooooo ..... -our society shouldn't provide anything for the homeless "if they don't feel the(sic) want to"?
I can't do anything with what I can't understand, and I find I can't understand your writings.

That contradicts what you said above, which was that "society needs to provide for one owns self, and family if chosen to have one." Clarity is important. It's not there.

Ok. I give up. I asked the wrong person.

 

Yes, I think there is a comedy section and you should have looked it up and posted that there.

 

First the counter-culture radical leftist hid behind the liberal label during the 1970's and 80's. After they dirtied the liberal label they moved on to hide behind the progressive label.

Now that the cultural-marxist radical leftist has dirtied the progressive label, where will they go next to hide behind ?

I sure hope they don't try to hide behind the depolrable label and dirty that label.

 

You really think a flat-to-declining real median wage over the last 30 years is a "higher standard of living for more people than anything else that has been tried"? You think life in a country with every river and lake polluted, failing healthcare, vanishing American Dream, huge and growing income disparity, increasing homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, and crushing college debt are good arguments for "higher standard of living for more people than anything else that has been tried"?

 

I have to assume at this point that you refuse to acknowledge that the right is completely responsible for spinning and falsely tarnishing the label "liberal". The word never meant what the right paints it up to be. It's just the ongoing work of the right as they shape language (think "1984" by Orwell) to prevent people from being able to think anything but what the right wants them to think. They're doing it with "fascism" and "progressive" now as they redefine these words and rewrite history. Honest objectivity is unknown to them.

 

Sparta was a direct democracy that all citizens were expected to participate in. To become a citizen is what you are getting hung up on. Just like Athens, citizens had a direct vote in their democracy. Athens had a few hiccups with oligarchy, but they didn't last.

I think you are hung up on how and who was a citizen, but every citizen had a vote.

Oh, so it was Christians that painted the sexual nature of Romans....by romans? Was this before or after 380 years of persecution by the Romans on Christians? Christianity didn't become the leading religion in Rome till 380 AD you know.

 

Exaggerate much?

I din't say it was without flaws, but please compare the life of the average citizen of the western countries that have been basically capitalistic with the rest of the world. Living standards in India and China are gaining because of capitalism.

 

You're talking history and other countries. Obviously I'm talking US today, and for the last 30 years, and known facts. Times change.

"Exaggerate"??? I used your words and responded specifically to them.

 

Yes.

Yes, just as they would want to lower the price of supplies to build, power to operate, gas to transport, any anything else that cost the company money. And this also leads to lowering the price of the final product too. The more people the company can get to by the product, the more prosperous the company becomes. When you are only producing a limited amount, you run the risk of idol employees, who still cost money if they are producing or sitting around. If you are packed with orders to fill, and everyone is productive, you are getting the most out of your money. Were cell phone companies making more when the phones first came out costing $3,000 a pop, or now when they cost $1-$600 a pop and have way more functions?

Labor and taxes.

Sell to consumers. Do you think Apple is trying to sell the iPhone to the Chinese workers making them, or the American's who have better jobs or subsidized by the federal government for a "free phone"?

The business find ways of lowering the price of the materials or cut down on the employees. Are yatch makers trying to sell decraprio yatchs to those who build them?

 

You are not bound to society, you are bound to yourself, and a family if you chose to have one.

I don't blame you, I was worried it wouldn't translate well.

Society isn't obligated to provide for the homeless, no. You as an individual, are not obligated to provide for the homeless either. If you so chose to on an individual basis, you can, but that doesn't mean that you and my neighbor can "vote for the society (3 of us)" to provide for the homeless. "Society" is an arbitrary construct that collectivist like to use to force their will on to others.

 

Correct. And if you have been following what I've been saying, you would know that U.S. demand is down because real median income has been flat-to-down for 30 years, resulting in insufficient spendable income available to provide the needed demand for healthy capitalism to flourish.

US companies couldn't make the math work with US workers' standard pay requirements. So they abandoned us to move overseas for cheap labor and then sell to us anyway so as to keep their profits growing.

US capitalism lacks the opportunity to flourish today because our US markets are pretty saturated, inventories are high, demand can't keep up with production, and big business is caught between the corporate need for continuing growth vs. the inability to market mass quantities of goods. So they're cutting costs as much as they can in as many ways as they can in order to keep boosting profitability. And they have cut about as much as they can. There's "nowhere left to go".

Capitalism in failing. When do you face it?

 

These progressive Left are will to fight off Nazism in entire USA.

Sad story by progressevism.

 

The original meaning behind the word liberal was what todays Libertarians stand for. Individuality. Open and freest markets. Less government. Do what ever the hell you want as long as you don't infringe on someone else's life, liberty, well being, or pursuit of happiness. Sorry, todays "liberals" want more from the government so they can be "freer" at the expense of those who the government has to take away from to provide to the liberals.

 

The more "progressive", Liberal, socialist the US has become in the past few decades, the lower life expectancy we receive. The longer the kids will be staying at home. The larger the debt they will have after college. The lower the education levels we are getting. The less "bang for our buck". How is this "better"? Hell, with Obama, our median income level per house hold has dropped. "Shovel ready jobs" paid by the government, ie socialism. Solyndra, not capitalism, but its evil twin sister crony capitalism.

 

For the past 30 years? The past decade maybe, but we have also seen the biggest printing of money ever by the FED. We have also seen the biggest explosion of gas prices since Carter. These are the biggest factors in our economy. If the US, Progressives especially, would allow for the larger mining of oil, gas, and coal in the US which actually produces wealth instead of redistributing it like government welfare, our median incomes wouldn't be flat to down. Look at the oil sands areas up in ND, Wal-Mart was paying $15/hr for workers to meet the demand. And those were the lowest paid people in the area. The oil workers were making 3x that. Progressives like Hillary want to kill the coal companies. Progressives and liberals have stopped the nuclear power plants from being built. Advances in human society have come from everything the left and progressives and liberals want shut down.

Forced pay requirements. Between unions and leftist government laws, the labor force of America became unnaturally too expensive. Henry Ford rose the price of the wages to get the best workers, not to sell them their own product.

Capitalism is never failing. Governments poison capitalist free markets then blame capitalism.

Oh, and another reason why our labor force is getting paid much more than they deserve, its because liberal progressives have flooded the lower levels of employment with illegal immigrants who are low skilled, low intelligence who are willing to be paid less and not taxed for the jobs that our own low skilled and low intelligence workers think they are too good to do but have no other jobs open to them. Chinese people making the iPhones have more skills than our high school drop outs, and they get paid less than our unemployed welfare junkies. You cant blame capitalism for the problems that the government caused.

 

Also, as the years pass, the earth is getting farther and farther from the sun. And as we get farther from the sun, the lower life expectancy we receive. The longer the kids will be staying at home. The larger the debt they will have after college. The lower the education levels we are getting. The less "bang for our buck".

That is as "relevant".

The thoughts in the public mind are irrelevant. It's the facts of the various pressures, forces, and strains on the economy that cause the economy to change, and that causes the fortunes of man to change. You're pointing to shiny objects that are distracting you.

That is yet another shiny object to point to, in addition to being a confusing jumble of words.

 

So you deny that the US is getting more socialized, or that those things are happening? Or are you just saying that you believe they are all true, but don't believe their is any correlation between them? Amazingly if its the later, I guess you also don't agree that when we were getting more capitalistic, everything was going up?

So, what is your reasoning for these staples of "quality of life" going down?

Another attempt to deflect and side step what is plain as day to see.

 

Every lake and river?

What was the life expectancy in the US 30 years ago?

College debt is the result of choices made by the individual. Go heavily in debt to obtain a degree in art history may be a mistake.

 

More importantly, classical progressives (myself included), moved on from identify politics the minute those wars (racism, sexism etc) were actually won last century. There are far more important problems which need 'progressing' today, than a man's right to enter a womens' bathroom because he likes wearing dresses.

 

21stC progressives are actually regressive. They want nothing to do with actual progress, because it means forward motion. They appear to hunger for a universal and permanent state roughly equivalent to Portland, Oregon in the late 1990s ... but with gay marriage. Nice and white, but with a good sprinkling of token brown people to better highlight their own 'inclusive' virtue. Rich, comfortable, and safely insulated from poor people who like football and didn't finish high school.

 

The fact that they call themselves liberal is even funnier. They're, in my own experience, the least liberal people alive.

 

You message is nonsensical.

Except for those in the military, every working person in the USA is a capitalist. The core premise of capitalism is that no one can be required to do any labor, provide any goods or any services unless the person agrees to the monetary compensation for it. In socialism people do not have that freedom. "Society" (ie the government) makes those decisions, like it or not.

Which "class" do you say people in government employment at all levels are by your theory - "working class" or "capitalist class?"

 

You're very much mistaken, with respect. The left themselves have become something other than what those words originally meant (to the left themselves). Liberal means for freedoms (regardless of the politics behind those freedoms). Progress means forward movement (regardless of politics driving that momentum). If you (GY) are not okay with progress and freedoms obtained via politics other than your own, then you are most definitely NOT liberal or progressive, you are merely an ideologue who's borrowed words you have no right to - probably because you think they'll signal virtues you don't actually possess.

 

I notice there has yet to be a post clearly spelling out the goals of the Progressive, as per the OP's request.

Further reinforcing the rapidly growing idea that it's no different to religious fundamentalism. Makes you feel good, makes you feel special and important, but zero substance. Lots of waffle, without any actual sense of direction or purpose. If you hold one over a flame long enough (fundie or Prog), they'll usually admit to being driven by a need to feel special, rather than by a desire for (the hard work of) real progress.