The New York Times
December 20, 2003
The Ownership Society
By David Brooks
In his State of the Union address, the president will announce measures to foster job creation. In the meantime, he is talking about what he calls the Ownership Society.
This is a bundle of proposals that treat workers as self-reliant pioneers who rise through several employers and careers. To thrive, these pioneers need survival tools. They need to own their own capital reserves, their own retraining programs, their own pensions and their own health insurance.
President Bush has a proposal to combine and simplify the confusing morass
of government savings programs and give individuals greater control over how
they want to spend their tax-sheltered savings. Administration officials hope, in a second term, to let individuals control part of their Social Security pensions and perhaps even their medical savings accounts.
Talking with staff, Bush emphasizes that he wants to use these policies to move from an “anything-goes culture” to a “responsibility culture.” By giving individuals control of their own retraining, their own savings and their own homes, he hopes to inculcate self-reliance, industriousness and responsibility.
Comment: Implicit in the shift to a “responsibility culture” through the establishment of the “Ownership Society” is the principle that opportunity is available to all. But universal opportunity means that we must have employment opportunities, living wages, affordable housing, affordable health insurance, enough disposable income to fund retirement accounts, and all of the other affordable opportunities that will make us “self-reliant pioneers.”
It is safe to say that for far too many of us, those opportunities do not exist. It is highly unlikely that the individuals without opportunities can create them by mere volition using their pioneering spirit. These deeply-rooted societal problems cannot be solved by merely praising the virtues of a utopian Ownership Society. These problems require a component of public policies and public programs to give us the “survival tools” needed to accomplish these goals.
We can use health care as an example. Just as mega-corporations are jointly
owned by shareholders, a universal program of health insurance can be jointly owned by the citizens. That would provide everyone with the survival tool for health care.
We can approach the goals of a utopian Ownership Society providing that we
properly balance private and public ownership by adopting public policies
that will accomplish these goals. President Bush needs to show us real policies that will provide all citizens with the survival tools they need to “own their own capital reserves, their own retraining programs, their own pensions and their own health insurance.” But to be effective, some of these will require joint public ownership within our Ownership Society.