February 25, 2010

On the Status of the "Progressive" Movement

I want to discuss what has as of lately been referred to as the "progressive," movement in this country. I use the term "progressive," loosely here because I feel that there is little about said movement in the way of advancing our country forward in any helpful manner.

What we have seen throughout the past years, from both major political institutions, is a relatively unprecedented amount of spending in Washington that does little to favor anything outside of big business and big government. As previously aforementioned in other contributions to this blog, the bailout represented companies that were supposedly "too big to fail." This unbelievable amount of spending by the Bush administration was subsequently followed by the Obama administration whose readiness to spend $3.3B over the course of 10 years in a "stimulus," package made the previous bailout almost appear laughable (Source: U.S. News and World Report).

That said, who stands to benefit from this "progressive movement," whose goals ideologically favor large corporations and even larger federal government? Well to put it simply I feel that I have answered my own question. Big business/big government run the show. However, it appears to go beyond that as well, but it's nearly impossible to say exactly what since so much "stimulus," money was sent to phantom zip codes across the country, not unlike this example from the state of North Carolina. Perhaps it is paying off individuals or groups who helped make "change," a reality. Perhaps it allows greater funding to political pet projects under the guise of assisting "smaller," states such as the Carolinas. Or even it could be that those in power want to stay in power, and the forcing of copious amounts of money onto good parts of the country helps to secure that.

In my opinion, we find that both political parties are huge and historically based. Further, the amount of cash flow that comes with that is sizable as well. This being said, we find that neither party is particularly out to serve the American people as organizations. But to take that a step further I think we should find that having a supermajority of either party is never going to be a good thing. The stimulus package, "public option" health care, and the jobs bill are all examples of greediness on the part of the current party in power. All of the previously aforementioned bills set before congress do nothing but favor larger government takeovers, such is the case with health care. Also with the stimulus package, the federal government essentially bought states and companies outright.

Ultimately what we have seen in our day and age is an advancement of a minority of people called the "progressives," into the positions of power on promises of "change." Well truly there has been change but consequently it has mostly involved adding on to the already high amounts of expenditure and increases in government power that Americans were not promised when they voted. Mises wrote of the "insanity," of the American economic climate... I wonder what he would have to say these days?

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