"I guess it is hard to prosper when you are anti-prosperity."

Yup. That's the part about the progressives that just makes no sense: their policies can only ever be short-term ones ending in meltdown because they are all counter-productive.

The only thing they are good at is to continue to fool the poor into thinking they are on the same side. Hmmmm , I guess it is hard to prosper when you are anti-prosperity.

Even if they hadn't been smart enough to discover that fact, they would have been receptive when
somebody explained it to them, unlike the hostile reaction Ayn Rand got, and with people
trying to call her a "nut" , etc.

I don't think I ever met a liberal who was genuinely concerned about the suffering of others, only about making them their slaves or using them to justify their own power. The goal should be to encourage and allow people to be free, and the economic system will allow them to prosper according to their esire and willingness to work. Now, if the drug epidemic were so easily solved.

Social Collectivist Dimo's and others of that ilk are longer rational humans. Not being rational they could not be Objectivist nor Capitalist. They wish to be Overlords of a Socialist Fantasy World. Their constituents are subjects with clay brains that can be molded by guttural propaganda. The individual as in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged is a threat to their world view.

They know about capitalism. They also know that true capitalism doesn't allow for power over their fellow man, which is their true desire.

But it doesn't let a person feel good by sharing another's earnings.

Degrading citizens into desperately dependent voters is what collectivists are into.
I'm sure some bullying kinda sadism is involved. Think of a buzzard lighting down on some poor suffering soul, spreading its wings and squawking, "Looki me! Lookit me! I'm so-o much better than this pathetic wretch!"
Back in the 70s a lady used that buzzard illustration to describe the mind set of vicious small town gossip.
It also works for fat cat collectivists aka "more than equal elite betters," who abuse to use people too.

They don't believe abundance exists, or can exist. To them, life is a zero-sum game.

Like the wonderful income equality achieved in Venezuela.

Yup. They aren't in it to alleviate poverty at all, but to aggregate power for themselves. Ultimately they seek a return to the feudal state: of lords and serfs.

All some want is to have things given to them, while excerting no pain (work) to get them on their own.

That may be. Without getting into the details here - I've seen their desire to create suffering for others a lot in some of my work over the past year. It's been pretty dark.

I think they enjoy the pain of themselves, NOT others. This is contradictory because every "self" is an "other" to the rest of the world.

Too many collectivists enjoy the pain of others. Took me a long time to figure that out...

Which may be one of the reasons they are no longer trying to fight poverty but are focused on income inequality.