Thank you Tony, I was just about to mention Bhutan's GNH myself, but you were first!

As I am interested in spiritual wealth rather than material wealth, my preferred way to measure a nation's performance is by the number and quality of saints and sages which that nation produces and by the extent to which seekers of God in that country are able to pursue their religious practices without mundane interference.

Progress to some is increasing profits. To others it is the impossible full employment. Progress to many Australians is an extension of the urban life that is all they know and is what protects them from the fearful bush at the city limits (thank god for fast cars and freeways so it can be crossed quickly without looking).

We seem to be getting a lot of holes in the ground and clogged up arteries in cities and in people, but not much happiness.

If government is for the people and by the people, a ridiculous thought I know (sic), government should already be measuring its attainments against community's consensus of happiness.

Instead, politicians measure themselves against the number of new Bills they pass to control and limit citizens, and they measure 'progress' by the number of (often redundant and useless) widgets made and the tonnage of raw materials shipped overseas.

Ask an elderly person on his/her death bed what really matters and we should get some simple and practical measures of progress that are not superficial or merely excuses to line some pockets.

I think we've demonstrated that "progress" can be measured in many different ways, personally I don't believe in progress at all, I acknowledge true being as a neutral state because there are always ups and downs to every idea.
If I take Csteele's example of "Gay" marriage how can we demonstrate that it's a step forward? I don't think we can, to my mind the negatives and positive aspects of homosexual lifestyles are at this time balanced and neutral in terms of any effect on the other 99% of people but to implement all the demands of the "gay" lobby would cause harm.
The "Gay" agenda doesn't end at legal marriage, they want equality, or so they say, the only options for achieving marriage "equality" are barbaric, cloning or incest.Since a "gay" union can only produce a child with a biological relationship to one parent their union can never be equal without these unthinkable interventions, that is to say only a grandchild conceived via incest can be related to both "gay" parents, though even then, the reltionship is not truly equal to a heterosexual union.
The only other option is cloning, now is this progress? Every dystopian science fiction world seems to have cloning and eugenics and altered versions of humanity as it's darkest scenario or it's "Pandora's Box", somehow I don't think this is just a trivial cultural trope.
I'd go further and say that equality and egalitariansim are the biggest impediments to progress because they set impossible goals, philosophers have long aspired to higher states of being but never insisted that any but the adept had the right to ascend to those planes, the lumpen have no such right and attempts to drag them up to the level of the adept are merely roadblocks in the way of progress.

We, all of us, stand in the way of progress often.
We must one day, understand doing things the same old way is not the way.
Thatcher had in the end, no plan to lift her victims out of povity.
She as a minister, took free milk from schools.
Progress? both sides need to TRULY review welfare, find a better way.
Tax reform not just tampering.
And us, we need to understand the limits of the funds government has, to take the true change, not fight it without looking at other ways to fix problems.

Csteele,

What, gay marriage so that ever more gay couples may make their lives more exciting or 'fulfilling', or their relationship 'saved' from disaster, by accessing surrogacy or donor facilities so they may become a 'complete' family? This is a mirage, a fiction, a poor imitation of a genuine family, so the fewer the better.
Given the well-documented failure rate of gay relationships (and the infidelity), any child 'born' to, or adopted by, a gay couple has such a high possibility of having a difficult (if not traumatic) childhood, that the promotion of gay marriage, with its potential consequences, is certainly not 'progressive' (but in my view is highly regressive).

Progress: Low crime rate, productive, well-educated and happy youth, fulfilled seniors, sound economy, minimal need for 'welfare', great free healthcare and aged care, affordable housing and transportation, effective security, defense and policing, an effective legal system that actually punishes offenders in commensurate proportion to their misdeed(s), greater application of personal responsibility, responsible free press and media, and compulsory vaccination.
And we should add, preservation and fostering of a thriving environment.
Sound and progressive government would help us to achieve these.

progress can also be measured by the interfering in peoples' initiatives by Government policy i.e. permits & taxes upon taxes until peoples' initiative is seriously knocked on the head & most progress has slowed to a crawl.