Driving with a friend the other day, a Democrat, we discussed how the GPS that most people now have in their cars has reduced the need to remember landmarks and figure out the routes to take when you want to get somewhere. In other words, the GPS has become a crutch that enables our laziness, which in this case isn't necessarily a bad thing in that it frees our minds up to remember other things.
Now, the picture below made the Internet rounds a few weeks ago and I post it for the same reason. And after reading Katrina vanden Heuvel's (I just love the name) article in today's Washington Post, I wonder the following. Do Progressives ever, ever, ever think that the welfare and redistributionist policies they promote, all in the name of wanting to help others, actually makes worse off the poor and least-skilled among us? Have they ever, ever, ever considered that, given the incentives to which people respond, such programs actually retard improving one's human capital? This keeps them poorer and dependent, both detrimental to improving the human condition.
Instead, the selfish interests of the Progressive mindset is blatant and disturbing. If they truly wanted to help the poor and least skilled they have to find ways of increasing the labor productivity of the least skilled, not subsidizing them to remain unproductive and out of the workforce. But working to improve the skills of the poor requires a) more effort expended working with the poor rather than lobbying governments to transfer money from the most productive to the less productive, and b) requires admitting mistakes and turning against politically entrenched allies in the form of teachers unions and other rent seekers.
No, Ms. vanden Heuvel, it's you and your Progressive friends who are cruel.