RE: Is it truly "progressive" when the negative things are simply pushed into ghettos and ignored while virtue signalling about other things?
So the virtue signalling "progressives", "liberals", "left", etc take care of them. As to education. That's what DACA is about. It is about paying for TRESPASSERS' education. All of this while we have homeless, and we do not have the government paying for the nation's actual children's education. Why? It's a chance to virtue signal about protecting these "dreamers" while ignoring the dreamers who actually are not trespassing.
Why not stop spending trillions in arms for destroying half of the Middle East and occupy the world through hundreds of military bases? Running an empire isn't cheap I guess... By the way what you describe as progressive is, as you said, not progressive at all. Reading your post one could think that the Soviets won the Cold War and we live in some kind of socialist nigthmare, yet your bankers, (I don't believe they are "socialists") are doing as fine as always.
And the US gov gives out free stuff by the billions, look at Israel, while your veterans kill themselves on the streets in complete abandonment. The massive subsides to US agriculture, isn't that the government giving you "free things"?
Thinking about it... the US is socialist, just not about human beings, only huge corporations. As when they invade countries like Iraq and then US corporations earn billions in "reconstruction", adding to the billions the military industrial complex makes, again with huge subsidies because of "national security". the US is a huge Welfare State, paradoxically, no socialism is involved. Actually, your government deeply hates you. They use the excuse of "national security" to destroy HUGE amounts of wealth that are more than enough for everyone in your country to have a great life, including "trespasser". (literally destroy, as in huge balls of fire, you turn wealth into bombs and just explode them somewhere, just imagine the effect those trillions would have in your society, but they will not let you thrive, you might end up taking their power)
With all due respect my honest belief is that you only read what supports the side of things you already chose.
None of that is free. We pay for it. The government can't give anything for FREE. They just are good at spending other people's money or putting those people into debt, or both.
Central banks dominate the world. They don't care whether you are capitalist, socialist, communist, or fill in the blank. As long as they control the monetary system.
The U.S. is a hybrid monster. It is a lot of different things. Though it does have an increasing amount of socialism. It also has a lot of people that don't even know their own history. I mean how many of them bother to ask if there was no IRS and no such thing as income taxes then "how did the government pay for things for the first 120+ years" as now people don't think it is possible to govern without income tax. They can't even imagine it.
I don't advocate the spending of huge sums on military either. Yet that was not the scope of what I wrote about, therefore you can't really know what I chose or did not choose.
I'll tell you that socialism likes to pretend it is "compassionate" and it is the bastion of the virtue signalling. Yet there is nothing compassionate about spending someone elses money. True compassion comes from reaching into your own pocket and choosing to help someone yourself. There is not a single ounce of compassion in authorizing people to steal from other people no matter what fancy mental clothing one tries to dress it up in.
It's free for them. It's like you are trying to establish the principle that wealth must come from somewhere, somebody has to produce it, of course. But that's not the point and sorry but I don't consider your attempts to avoid the subject as smart or astute enough. Let's just keep talking about those mean "trespassers", that problem is a priority. The US spending billions in destroying other societies can wait, after all, "trespassers" are taking a dump on the street somewhere near you.
"Trespassers"? do you urinate around the perimeter of your home? You sound extremely territorial. At some point, some people designed some maps and borders, most of the times after wars, by force. Since it's convenient for us right now let's respect them, perhaps tomorrow the Empire (very important word) will need to "trespass" one more time, but that's fine.
Again you completely evaded the central point(sorry, I'm being arrogant by assuming you "evaded" it, perhaps you just missed it). I'll say it clearly: The West is not dominated by socialism, explaining the state of our world today taking into consideration socialism as a major force is just dishonest and wilfully blind. That's my opinion.
I fail to see the socialism, do you mean in discourse? There is, as you say, a lot of talk about it, but discourse isn't exactly what matters.
Socialism is whatever the people executing the policies makes it. Most of the time it fails miserably for a lot of very different reasons.
I disagree. Property involves power and force, in my opinion. With military power, you just take whatever you want and then you completely and legally own it because you make the laws. What makes us so different from those who were born in absolute poverty? why cling like that to "our" things as we somehow deserve it, are we that special and different from those "trespassers"? A lack of empathy explains this, in my opinion. An incapacity to see yourself reflected on those you don't identify yourself with due to color, culture, beliefs, etc. They are the "other", let's blame them for everything. (I'm not saying this is your perspective, as you said, I don't know you).
This is rather arrogant. You can infer what I read and don't read from this. That is bullshit. You think way too highly of your mind reading capabilities.
I tend to keep a very open mind. I also read a lot of material. I use simple math. I use logic. I use reason. I also look closely at history. I pay attention to the claims of people. I've been having these debates for years. So I honestly believe you should be looking in a mirror when you write something like that last sentence.
How many debates between different scholars from say the post 1940 era and perhaps some before that have you read? How many debates between advocates for different forms of economics have you read?
See I don't know what you've read. I also cannot infer that from the little bit you've written. Yet that is skirting the zone where the virtue signalling bullshit is coming from.
I refuse to be politically correct, I refuse to try super hard not to offend people. Some things are going to offend people, and if I was being honest. So what? It's called life. Now you didn't say anything in particular that I disagreed with other than your last sentence. I also consider it very arrogant and presumptuous.
You are right about this. But I have to add that you avoided any kind of debate or criticism to what I said, except for this speculation about what you might or might not read, which was wrong to do. In everything else you just avoided the subject, sometimes cleverly, sometimes not so much.
And you presume you actually said anything significant that warranted a response? You assume that a few paragraphs in a reply can actually state something significant in this post? This typically is something that would take a very deep post of their own to me. Then I might be able to respond. I didn't actually see much of substance in the response that warranted a reply. That doesn't mean it may not be there. I just don't see it.
Oh really? I thought it was my post and I set the subject. It looked to me like you were taking it into areas my post didn't mention as if I had just written a huge book on the subject and I left out some areas you wanted to poke at.