David Sirota lays it out in all its glory:
It seems to me that traditional "liberals" in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A "progressive" are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.
To put it in more concrete terms - a liberal solution to some of our current problems with high energy costs would be to increase funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). A more "progressive" solution would be to increase LIHEAP but also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better-regulating the oil industry's profiteering and market manipulation tactics. A liberal policy towards prescription drugs is one that would throw a lot of taxpayer cash at the pharmaceutical industry to get them to provide medicine to the poor; A progressive prescription drug policy would be one that centered around price regulations and bulk purchasing in order to force down the actual cost of medicine in America (much of which was originally developed with taxpayer R&D money
You got that? liberals only want to turn our country into a socialist state, while progressives want us to be a communist state with price controls, or better yet, state controls on everything.
In other words, liberals still want to work for corporations and make big money, but of course lie to their friends and say they work at PETA. Now progressives on the other hand, they want to destroy all corporations because they, and the capitalist system they thrive in are inherently evil. Got that still?
Hey Dave, just a question; do you think the protease inhibitors and retroviral drugs that were put on the market that have saved hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people were developed because the government mandated it or because our American corporations were mostly free of government intrusion and operating in a free market system?
I'll help you out here buddy. If a company sees a need for a product, they will develop that product using their own money and resources. If the government mandates that they develop something, we end up with a nice product like the Chernobyl nuclear power plant or Soviet-made cars.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Difference Between a Liberal and Progressive
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2 comments:
I think you are making a pretty black & white point about something that might not be so black & white. I'm not disagreeing with you that it is the capitalistic market and the initiative of pharmaceutical companies that has advanced medicine and pharmacology to where it is today. But take your same issue, protease inhibitors and ask is it humane to have drugs available to keep people alive that many people who have the disease can not afford. To make these drugs so expensive as to be prohibitive to a class of people affected by the disease. (not to mention epidemics of the disease in other countries).
Look at it another way. Is it right for a drug company to extend a patent on a pill by changing its color (done ALL THE TIME) so that generic versions can not be offered?
I personally don't know the right or wrong answer to these questions, but I know that how it works now isn't right. And I know that forcing drug companies to do certain 'things' with their pricing might not be right. But something has to be done.
Also, Sirota is big on his 'progressive' label and that seems to be a huge arguement (liberal v. progressive) going on in the left side of the blogosphere and not all agree with Sirota. If you are really interested in what the 'left', progressives, liberals and everyone else thinks, read a bit more and see that not everyone agrees with Sirota.
The issue is that the drugs would not be so expensive if the pharmaceutical companies didn't have to jump through the myriad hoops the government lays out.
Also, the litigiousness of America contributes to the high cost.
Pharmaceutical companies do offer lower cost drugs to developing nations but the simple fact is that it costs a great deal of money to get a viable drug to market and then sell what they can in seven years before it can be released as a generic.
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