Welcome to part 2 of “I hate progressives”, where I have to remind people that I don’t necessarily hate the people, although there are plenty of assholes on all sides of the political aisle, and only the ideas that they have. This was spurred by a call into The Line, which I responded to a couple of posts ago, but this was just too massive a topic to engage with any other way. So let’s get back to it.

Once again, I’m taking this from The Progressive Promise, which is a platform statement from the House of Representatives.  I’m using it as a jumping-off point for the discussion, so I’m not actually taking it up with the House Democrats. It’s just useful in that regard. I know that this is not what all progressives believe and that it is being stated in the most attractive way possible to attract people to vote for them, but still, this is why I cannot stand any of these positions.

Advancing the right of every American to retire with security and dignity.

Meaning more free money. This is just buying votes and I will never agree with that from either side. People need to be responsible for their own lives. I’m in the ballpark of retirement, although it will be a while until I do, and my wife and I both worked our asses off our entire lives so that, right now, we can be very comfortable. Everyone that I know that has worked their butts off, they are all very comfortable right now. The ones that didn’t, the ones that wanted to play and ignore their responsibilities, they are reaping what they sowed. I don’t feel particularly bad for them. Of course, both sides have destroyed Social Security and now the left wants to just hand over tons of money, driving up inflation again, because it’s likely to get them votes. Screw that.

Yes, there are lots of excuses for this and I’ve probably heard them all. I just don’t buy any of them. I hold people accountable for living a responsible life. If you can’t do that, then you’re the one with the problem, not me.

This is like the people who willingly borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from the government to go to college and now, they don’t want to pay it back. Fuck you. If you’re not going to pay it back, don’t  borrow it in the first place. If you got a worthless degree, and a lot of people do, then you have only yourself to blame.

We see this kind of thing from the left all the time, people who just don’t want to be personally responsible for anything. It’s like the people, and this will come up again in a couple of posts, who say “I had a dozen kids, but I don’t have a job and I can’t pay for them!” Then what the hell is wrong with you? They know what causes that, you know? Maybe you should not breed. It’s not like these people had good-paying jobs and had a bunch of kids and then got fired. They never had any gainful employment to begin with. Screw you idiots. I have some sympathy for your kids, who had no part in your bad decisions, but you can just starve. We’ll come back to this again later.

If you want to retire with dignity, then you need to live with dignity. That means living within your means. That means getting an education when you had the chance. It means not having a ton of kids that you can’t afford. It means saving your money.

Most Americans have almost no savings. 30% have less than $5k stashed away. The vast majority have less than $20k saved up. Only 14% of Americans have more than $20k in the bank. That is utterly pathetic. You cannot live the rest of your life on $20k. You just can’t.

Granted, those figures aren’t broken down by age, and you’d expect people who are close to retirement age to have more. If we look by age, people 65-74 have about $200k in retirement savings to get them through the rest of their lives. That is per couple, typically. That’s still not enough. So let’s look at how this breaks down by party affiliation. Yes, I know that not all Democrats are progressives, but it’s the best we can do from a Debt.org study.

According to the study, when it comes to making very little money, the study starts at $15k, Democrats make up 63%. As income increases, more Republicans have a healthy amount of money and Republicans and Independents both report being more comfortable with their amount of wealth and feel that their personal financial situation is workable.

Therefore, it’s not really a surprise that the Democrats, which includes the progressives, have their hands out for more. Yes, the left actively reaches out to the destitute because they’re just looking for votes. If they hand over enough money, they get elected, whereas the Republicans, at least to a certain degree, want people to be more responsible so they don’t have to get handouts. 80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, according to the Census Bureau. How do they get elected? By promising people shit, but that doesn’t make the problem go away, does it?