Bush to push ownership society

[Khephra]

Bush to push ownership society

Critics say proposals will shift tax burden to the lower and middle classes, create huge deficits.

September 2, 2004: 11:46 AM EDT
by Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money senior writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When he accepts his party's nomination for a second term this week, President Bush likely will promise to give individuals greater control of their savings, retirement and health-care benefits, shrink the federal budget deficit and make recent tax cuts permanent.

Viewers can expect his stated goal to be to make the economy more productive, make the government more efficient and give people more control over their own destinies.

snip........

President Bush, in his acceptance speech Thursday night, will likely repeat a theme he has touted in recent weeks on the campaign trail, calling for the establishment of an "ownership society," in which families are given incentives and rewards for owning homes and businesses and for controlling their own savings, health and retirement benefits.

The president has so far offered few details of his plan, and there may be some surprises Thursday night -- anything from a reform of the tax code to a call for some kind of national sales tax may be possible -- but here are the highlights of what he's proposed in the past:

http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/01/news/economy/election_bush_plan/

[truthspeaker]

1. Ownership society = Rich people own your asses

[saigon68]

2. THE GOLDEN RULE = HIM that's got the gold--makes the RULE

KIND OF LIKE THAT

[underpants]

3. it = privatization/deregulation.........which is GREAT

look what it did for the telecommunications, energy, and airline industries. PLUS! Look what it did for airport security....:grr:

[0007]

17. ....the postal service is another fucked up program

[Demonaut]

24. like the chinese, a death sentence for misuse of public funds

put that in the clause and see how many repukes would vote for that.

[54anickel]

4. Nice table posted over in Econ showing the difference in tax liability

between Shrub's tax cut and Kerry's plan.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x11061

[underpants]

6. THanks-EVERYONE NEEDS TO PRINT THIS OUT

D&T no less. Outstanding.

[markses]

5. We already have an "ownership society"

We all own the roads.
We all own the national parks.
We all own the military bases and equipment.
We all own all those government buildings.
We all own any reports issued by the govvernment.
We all own the waterways.
We all own all that equipment used by the government.

We all own a lot of things. We all own the mechanisms of our society.

As it fucking should be.

[truthisfreedom]

7. not since bushco got in. they've blocked our acces to the information we

own... reports of all kinds.

[UTUSN]

8. A Satanic Domestic Agenda - Gutting Medicare, Soc.Sec. & Turning Dems Agai

*********QUOTE*******
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/08/25/bush_second_term/index.html

And you thought his first term was a nightmare
What Bush has planned for America if he wins.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Charles Tiefer

Aug. 25, 2004 | .... Under Bush's slogan of an "ownership society," the Republicans intend a long-term effort, using changes in Medicare, Social Security and taxes to pit better-off and worse-off Democrats against each other, offering all-but-irresistible incentives for some to desert the others -- and any progressive national coalition. .... A second-term Bush agenda will constantly impale Democrats on the dilemma of abandoning their poorer, sicker, older and minority groups, or seeing their better-off, healthier and younger members lured off to the other party. If it sounds like a political nightmare for the Democrats, that's because that's what it is planned to be. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

[DFWJock]

9. Hey Chimp

We already "own" a huge deficit, thanks to you.

[krkaufman]

10. Hilarious article synopsis...!!

Can you believe this...

Critics say proposals will shift tax burden to the lower and middle classes, create huge deficits.

Frickin' duh!! This is NOT a hypothetical being proffered by critics. Have you NOT been reading the news? The numbers are in!

Just gotta love the "earth is flat; opinions differ" approach to journalism.

[dumpster_baby]

11. Translation: We Rich Folks Gonna Own Your Ass! n/t

[SKKY]

12. R.E.M wrote a song about this very topic...

"With a landers tie, and a murderer's shoe.
Life's rich demand creates supply in the hand of the powers,
The only vote that matters."

"Begin the Begin" from the album "Life's Rich Pageant"

[triguy46]

13. Empty words

With corporate America and its market purchasing power unable to manage the explosion in health care costs, there is ample reason to assume that an individual will be less than a pawn in any attempt
to purchase/negotiate any type of favorable health care coverage.

This entire approach is a charade, in which people are led to believe that the power of one has power. It also plays to the well documented truth that the 'individual' rarely acts in their long term interest, rather, using resources for immediate reward. Contrarian investing demonstrates that when the public moves into the market, they will always make the wrong choices.

[Zorra]

14. Slavery again? Or just good ol' indentured servitude?

Ownership Society?

First, redistribute all wealth equally among the American people, and we'll take it from there. I'm game, yep, you bet! Start me out with, say, half a mil - hey, no problema, dude!

But ya see, Georgie...., how should I put this.....um, our mommies and daddies did not start with millions of dollars in the bank that they got because their mommies and daddies traded with the Nazis during WWII like your grampa Prescott did.

If we start a business and it fails, like you did (with capital you were given by mommy and daddy) so many, many times, Georgie, we're toast. We don't have rich mommies and daddies to tell us "It's ok sweet wittle Georgie snookums, mommy and daddy will make everything better - why, we'll even buy you your own baseball team! Will that make you feel better, precious wittle Georgie-weorgie"? No, we have to go out and wash dishes or pick apples or start from scratch to the best of our ability to pick up the pieces of our shattered lives.

If we invest in a 401K retirement fund, and the money gets stolen by you and your buddy Ken Lay (like you did in the Enron scandal, I bet you think you are so fucking clever for scamming us on that one!) we are out in the street at 65 yrs. old, begging for food, with no Social Security to back us up. But that's what you'd like to see, isn't it, Georgie?

Maybe not really.

An ownership society will eventually lead to an American Bastille Day due to intense rapid polarization of wealth.

[TahitiNut]

15. "Let them eat cake!"

Clueless when apprised of the starving peasants not having enough bread to feed their families, Marie Antoinette, offered advice that made sense in the only worldview with which she had any experience. Why even worry about the bread when there's cake? Indeed. Why?

We have a class war across an ever-widening divide. We have people who have, for generations, lived profligately off the labor of others. They regard their unbounded entitlement to the fruits of the labors of others to be "natural" and ordinary. Just like Marie Antoinette, they have no experience performing the labor from which their wealth is derived and increases by the minute. Indeed, they don't even perform the oversight and management of their own properties, relegating that to their agents and toadies.

Borrowing from Kant, can their action possibly be a maxim for the world? Can everyone live off the labor of others? If so, who will perform the labor? "Them"? (Certainly, not "us.")

It's a recipe for a ruination, not a nation. It's the delusion of empire. It's plantation economics: those who labor are excluded. They're mere property: a means to the ends of greed, sloth, and self-indulgence.

The deluded, once seduced into thinking that their 'ownership' entitles them to a slice of the wealth, merely add their voice to that of the profiteers and thereby increase the wealth of the already wealthy - further reducing labor's share of the wealth they, and they alone, create.




Random thought: It seems to me that Junior McFascist regards his travels through the Amurikan 'heartland' in exactly the same way as a POSH (Port Out Starboard Home) British (aristocratic) tourist regarded a safari through the lands of the Empire - and the 'security' was merely a necessity due to the animals and hostile natives (indistinguishable, of course). He's the Great White Hunter on a safari - at least in his 'mind.' He stops only at missions where the savages have been civilized. Fun stuff.

[BiggJawn]

16. We will "Own" the DEBT...

While the rich will lick the cream off the top and leave us shit.

I'm tellin' ya, you "Limosine Liberals" had better start thinking about what you do and how you live. The "Unwashed Rabble" like me ain't gonna be checking voter registration cards when we come to your gated communities....

[amber dog democrat]

19. Its going to get a whole lot worse

before this doctrine of "ownership" is repudiated.
There is something plain wrong about 1% of the poplulation having 90% of the wealth.
Much of it is inherited.
I fear we are in for some very interesting times.

[BiggJawn]

21. 99% percent "owns" 10%, 1% owns 90%

Sure does seem lopsided, don't it?

You can bet it'll get interesting.

Rich People Suck.

[amber dog democrat]

22. Did you ever look at the economic conditions in France

prior to the Revolution ? For that matter most people are not aware how near the US came to civil turmoil during the depression.
I don't expect this current situation to remain stable.

[BiggJawn]

26. Didn't somebody else mention "Bastille Day"?

But...you know what? The French peasants didn't have 500 channels of sattelite Teee-Veeeee and AOL IM to keep them happy....

Yank the Cable, and the ReTHUGs will have HUGE problems on their hands.

[recidivist]

25. One remedy: fully fund Social Security.

One of the many advantages of shifting Social Security from a paygo to a fully funded basis is that it would lead over time to significant wealth creation for lower income Americans.

No, full funding doesn't mean everyone is going to retire rich. But it does mean everyone would have -- in addition to higher retirement benefits -- at least some tangible assets to pass on to the next generation. Do this for a couple of generations, and the results are potentially transformative.

We should not let the Republicans own this issue.

[Fovea]

23. Saint Peter don't ya call me

cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the KBR store.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

18. The law of the jungle

Every man for himself

Dog-eat-dog individualism

I got mine, you get yours

[KamaAina]

20. "Ownership society": Bush*speak for "massive debt society"

http://slate.msn.com/id/2106070/

The major obstacle to greater ownership isn't a recalcitrant Congress or an American fear of investing. It's debt—debt that the president and his ally, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, have done their best to increase. President Bush, despite having an MBA, has never shown much understanding of finances, and he has failed to recognize that there are two sides to the ledger: assets and liabilities. The defining financial phenomenon of President Bush's first term has been a vast increase in the amount Americans owe—collectively and as individuals. Thanks to Greenspan's marvelously accommodative monetary policy and the Republicans' reckless fiscal policy, we have more of a debt society, and less of an ownership society....

What's more, each of Bush's ownership proposals would require adding even more to the federal debt. Bush's signature plan for Social Security involves allowing younger workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into accounts that they would own. It's a nice idea. But in order to do so while keeping promises made to current older workers, the government will have to come up with transitional costs on the order of several hundred billion dollars. Every penny of that sum would have to be borrowed. The same holds true on a smaller scale for other Bush proposals like expanding health and retirement savings accounts.

Since one person's debt is another person's asset, the vast expansion of American debt in recent years theoretically could have been accompanied by an equivalent rise in American assets. But the U.S. is blessed with open and vibrant capital markets. With Americans simply refusing to save, the government has increasingly sold its debt to the central banks of our trading partners like Japan and China. To a large degree, then, the debts of American taxpayers are now the assets of Asian governments. If the U.S. Department of the Treasury simply becomes a funnel through which American tax dollars flow to foreign central banks, President Bush's ownership society could become more of an Asian phenomenon than an American one.

But don't expect to hear much about deficits or debt tomorrow night, or any time this week. Like the phrase "Democracy in Iraq," the words have simply evaporated from the Republican vocabulary.

"Leave No Child Behind": gut public education. "Healthy Forests": large-scale clear-cutting. And now "ownership society": get yourself in hock to The Man up to your hip boots.

[MaineDem]

30. Wonder if he'll mention the number of foreclosures?

It's not easy to make mortgage payments with no freakin' jobs!!!

[xxqqqzme]

27. but who 'owns' the mortgage

on that home? Who controls your savings? how is your retirement account being invested? What happens when the investments of your health care savings account go belly up? Or the costs have risen above your cost of care? Do U go N2 debt 4 that a well?

I have been trying 2 get an appointment 2 C an orthopedist for 2 weeks now. I am being treated w/ arrogance and disdain and I HAVE health insurance! I shudder 2 imagine what it must B like 4 the uninsured.

[The_Casual_Observer]

28. They must now believe that the lamb is ready for the slaughter

after 4 years of brow beating, wars, job loss, loss of freedom, outsourcing.

They are ready to "bring it on", the elimination of the middle class and middle class "entitlements" once and for all.

[Blue_Tires]

29. compassionate feudalism??

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

31. Ahhh yessss. The IGMSFU* society of the 21st Century

* (I Got Mine So Fuck You)