Progressive enough

Have to share a quick thought, and not to get political but…

I’ve just spent almost three weeks touring the truly progressive social democracy of Norway.

Saw a few homeless drug addicts in Oslo. Few elsewhere. Not at all like the conditions in Seattle and similar cities, where living on the streets without care or sanitation is more common. And where the problems are often blamed on progressive policies.

Norway is a country with modern roads, and tunnels, and bridges, and airports.

It’s a country where no one goes bankrupt for lack of health insurance. And where people are healthier by most measures than we are.

A country moving to a modern power grid and cars of the future.

So perhaps its not the idea that we’re all in it together, that we have responsibility for each other and country, that’s the problem. Perhaps it’s that decades of every-man-for-himself conservatism have made it OK to leave people on the street. Perhaps its that attitude that holds us back.

Because western social democracies don’t have the depth of some of these problems that here, many blame on social democracy.