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Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there has been a great resurgence of progressive and social democratic theories and proposed remedies in the United States. 

Of course, many of these ideas have existed for decades. For example, the passage of the Social Security Act, the 1930’s and Medicare in the 1960’s and the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1990’s are all evidence of this progressive streak in American politics. 

However, it was the election of President Trump that made many people notice that many inequalities remain in the American economy and social life. As these inequities grow stronger, change  becomes more urgent. 

As as a result, many progressive activists and politicians have proposed a number of solutions to level the playing field and to make economic and justice available to all.

Conversely, critics of economic and social justice have cautioned that these solutions are unworkable, unaffordable and socialist in nature. These efforts are often seen as a way to maintain the status quo.

However, when compared  to the social teachings of the Catholic Church, these progressive proposals become more mainstream, more necessary.

Such progressive solutions include:

1. Addressing the income inequality between the rich and the poor and the middle class through ideas such as increasing taxes on the very wealthy,, reform of Wall Street and shifting our focus to Main Street, aggressively enforcing our anti-trust laws and limiting the size of large financial institutions.
2. Promoting a living wage. 
3. Creating new, well paying jobs through projects to rebuild our weakened infrastructure. 
4. Promote ideas that make it easier for workers to form unions and place workers into the structures of corporate governance.
5. Address global warming and climate change by moving away from a carbon-based economy and by promoting renewable energy. 
6. Increase citizen participation in our government by making it easier, not harder, to vote, corraling the power of lobbyists and by getting big money out of politics.
7. Providing for free or affordable higher education and by reforming student financing. 
8. Creating a system of universal healthcare and reducing the cost of medical care and prescription drugs. 
9. Reforming the criminal justice system and our gun laws. Supporting racial justice and LGBT rights. 
10. Moving towards just, fair and compassionate immigration policies.
11. Eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels and the creation of a New Energy Economy.
12. Taking measures to combat climate change and to strengthen biodiversity.

‘It is easy to see how each one of these progressive goals  (and many others not enumerated here) can be related to one or more of the themes of Catholic Social Teaching.