One of the tired old tropes about people on the right is that they want to outlaw progress and "go back to the 19th century."
But these days it seems it is progressives who are resisting change and fighting ... well, progress.
Consider Senator Sanders' crusade to keep some 15 Vermont post offices and two mail processing centers open even as the USPS faces imminent bankruptcy. Seems one of the nation's most conspicuous progressives is
crafting legislation to maintain mail service to communities throughout Vermont and avert cuts that could cost thousands of workers their jobs.
And how, one wonders, will this legislation accomplish this goal? There are only two options. Either find money somewhere – China is said to be flush these days – and use it to keep things as they are with the USPS, or outlaw the competition. That is, put FedEx & UPS out of business and find a way to tax e-mails.
If keeping people at work in obsolete jobs is the point of government, then Mr. Sanders has a wide field on which to run. Many, many jobs would reappear, as Art Woolf has pointed out, if we simply outlawed self-service gas stations and ATM machines. But it would be tough to call that "progress."
Unless, of course, you are a progressive.
Then it works.
