An "Ownership Socity"....what does it REALLY mean?

[AnnInLa]

This is a long article in the New Yorker magazine, but try to read it all so we can understand just what the repug "plan" is. The meat of the article is in the bottom half. I think we MUST understand the implications of this so we can elect members of Congress who also understand the implications and will work to stop it:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040906fa_fact

[laruemtt]

1. "ownership society" =

greed rules. all other bets are off.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Means * and his plan to own all Americans, and tell us how to think

[daveskilt]

3. here's what it means

[NewHampshireDem]

4. Great article

To me, the most frightening thing about the tax cuts is the repeal of the inheritence tax. That will do more to create a permanent divide between rich and poor than the flat tax could ever hope to achieve.

I'd like to see a campaign commercial with Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and all the other rich-bitch spoiled brats with the tagline, "Never worked a day in their lives, but thanks to the * tax cuts will live lives more comfortable than yours for all time."

[Joanne98]

5. Can you say Argentina?

Argentina is the world's first privatized country. They went from the richest country in South America to the poorest in 20 yrs by following the IMF restructing plan. We've gone from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debter in 24 yrs. If you study Argentina, then you'll know what the country looks like in ten yrs. That's the ownership society. NO MIDDLE CLASS.

[cornfedyank]

6. ownership for a few, owership for most

shrub et al get permanent tax cuts to include 100% of the estate tax. Then they will be compassionate enough to loan the rest of us thier money, at a variable rate of course so that we can be owners. Then when the rates go up and the foreclosures happen on these low downpayment loans I wonder who will have the funds left to snap up the bargins?

answer me this. After they let people own thier social security and invest the funds, who do people fall back on after some kenny-boy steals the cookie jar? compassionate conservatives?

[oneighty]

16. Colt forty-five

retirement plan kicks in.

180

[liberalmuse]

7. This is ****ing scary!

Bush and the neocons are trying to take us back to the 1800's. Basically, the laborers and middle class will be carrying the rich on their backs if Bush's economic agenda is fully realized. Welcome to Neo-Feudalism. We cannot let this happen!

[Nimrod]

8. What I think it really means

Ever hear the term "it takes money to make money"? That's about to become our new national motto. Another row of barb wire on top of the class wall.

"Ownership Society" means the more you own the bigger part you get to play in society. If you don't own anything you're shit out of luck. The already-wealthy get to live in even more luxury, and the rest of us are now the never-will-be-wealthy.

Don't know about you but I don't own anything except a few pieces of used furniture, an 8-year old computer and a 20-year old car that I bought for $750 cash. I own no property, no business, no stock. I get my money from hourly wages rather than capital gains. As a result, it's extremely unlikely that I'm ever going to own anything.

I am a never-will-be-wealthy. The ruling class likes me here, so here's where I'm likely going to stay.

[liberalmuse]

9. Exactly right.

I just bought my first new car this year, a 2002 model. I had an IRA for a few months, and was briefly part of the investor class, but had to cash it out after being laid off. I rent a duplex from landlords who are hardcore Bush supporters. I am prepared to move within days if they put one of their Bush/Cheney signs in the front yard. Most of my stuff couldn't sell for more than $30 for at a yard sale. I can't understand anyone who makes under a million voting for Bush. Basically, if we allow the Norquist/neocon/corporate vision to materialize, our grandchildren will be little more than slaves. You think corporations own our government now? You ain't seen nothing yet! At least 'We The People' have some power, or the illusion of it now.

Another brief article:
http://www.arena.org.nz/usfeudal.htm

[AnnInLa]

21. Oh, but Nimrod....

This is the Land of Opportunity, hadn't you heard? If Ahnold can do it, so can you!!! If you don't rise to the wealthy class, it's all your own fault, and don't expect any government programs, paid for by my taxes, to help you out! See how compassionate we are?

[Dudley_DUright]

10. I think they are actually saying

owner-serf society.

[markus]

11. Will the Owners have to pay property taxes on us

when we're all reduced to serfdom?

[VOX]

12. It's a line of shit to lube up the privatization of Social Security...

The right-wing finally got into Medicare late last year (one of Newt's longtime goals) -- anyone notice that, on the day **after** Shrub addressed the RNC, it was announced that Medicare premiums will be hiked 17%? So much for the lip-service about helping the elderly with medical costs.

Well, BushCo is now setting its sights on the privatization of Social Security. All kinds of companies stand to gain from this. The attempt to run it through will be sugar-coated with a load of crap about "ownership."

[daa]

13. I got mine, you're on your own eom

[K-W]

14. The end of the New Deal is exactly what it means.

We now have a name for the plan to set us back to the last century.

[UTUSN]

15. Something Like This

*******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*******

[troublemaker]

17. Here's the ownership society

[UTUSN]

18. Great Article. Thanks. Too Bad "Issues" Aren't Discussed in Campaigns

*********QUOTE********
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040906fa_fact

.... When the President pledges to create an “era of ownership,” he is not talking merely about encouraging people to buy their own homes and start small businesses. To conservative Republicans who understand his coded language, he is also talking about extending and expanding the tax cuts he introduced in his first term; he is talking about allowing wealthy Americans to shelter much of their income from the I.R.S.; about using the tax code to curtail the government’s role in health care and retirement saving; and, ultimately, about a vision that has entranced but eluded conservatives for decades: the abolition of the graduated income tax and its replacement with a levy that is simpler, flatter, and more favorable to rich people. ....

...the theme of ownership. He may well talk about establishing investment accounts within Social Security, as well as Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts outside of Social Security, and health savings accounts, which his economic advisers view as a step toward individual, portable health-care coverage. .... “The biggest demographic shift in the past thirty years is not the number of people who speak Spanish; it is the number of Americans who own stocks,” Norquist told me. “It was twenty per cent of adults when Reagan was elected. Now it is sixty per cent, and seventy per cent of voters.”

...returning to a balanced budget will be even harder this time around. A decade ago, it took “tax hikes, a sharp contraction in military spending, and an unprecedented economic expansion to achieve fiscal consolidation,” the I.M.F. noted. None of those things are on the horizon now. ....

“It is the height of deception to say we can only budget till 2009 but we are going to have massive tax cuts from 2010 onward,” Gale said. “That is what the Administration has done.” ....

...a historic restructuring of the American system of government. .... If Bush’s economic agenda was fully enacted, the vast bulk of these payments wouldn’t be taxed at all, and labor would end up shouldering practically the entire burden of financing the federal government. ....

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

[Killarney]

19. great article!

[TahitiNut]

20. We're there. Labor hasn't been as devalued for more than 50 years.

The ratio of corporate profits to employee compensation has reached 50-year highs. What does this mean? Since all wealth is created by labor, labor is receiving a lesser share today than in any time in the last 50 years.




At the same time, corporate profits have never been taxed at a lower effective tax rate. The "owners" are collecting the wealth with the collusion of a government whose costs they are shifting to labor.




After-tax corporate profits have never been a higher share of the nation's entire income, and labor compensation has never been lower.





This is the "ownership society" - plantation economics: enslavement of labor for the benefit of wealthy autocrats.

[haele]

22. my question to those who think an ownership society is the way to go...

Does this mean that everyone who has to work for a living actually gets to pick their corporate owners, or do all us workers and small businesspeople end up on a common auction block?

Without the oversight to ensure that providers of health care, jobs, investment and business opportunities, common utilities, education, food, et all are legitimate and that the playing field is level - it ends up a Randian "survival of the wealthiest" game, and we all get owned by the few monopolies rather than owning any little piece of the so-called American Dream. Even "millionaires" are at risk, especially those who got their wealth through investments while working their way up through the middle class, are usually retired, but still have to pump a portion of their wealth into a small business or investments to maintain their standard of living.

So - do we give up a small percentage of our "individual earnings and ownership" (in terms of taxes and community regulations) to insure that we can keep the majority of our personal integrity and opportunities intact, or should we just throw it all to the wind and gamble that we can hold our own against insurance companies, banks, and other corporations that are on the same legal status as individual citizens and already heavily invested in their own version of an "individual ownership society".

Methinks the cards we working stiffs will be dealt to gamble with our future on are already marked, and the average middle class professionals, lesser millionaires, small business owners and working citizen are marked to be bought and sold like chattel amongst the upper 1% economic class and their buddies, the corporations.

Haele

[TrustingDog]

23. ... means we're all gonna be 'owned' or 'pwned'

[Veggie Meathead]

24. It means you own the debt.Your banks own the assets.

[cornfedyank]

27. if you want stuff somebody has to pay the bill

my problem is the inch worm has forget his tail.

if shrub et al want to talk about god's gifts of freedom...they like that freeedom to do bidness...they try to endow the corporation with too many freedoms that should be reserved. For example: Freedom to be Clean, Dry, Warm, and Fed... That should be a nice start.

But a bassboat or a summerhouse or a two tone phone, they are incentives. If that stuff is worth having it's worth the effort to make the payments.

[sweetheart]

25. It means they believe in slavery

and that they plan to "own" the american labour resources in the
future, as "ownership" is a plan they've long pursued since being
deterred by the union army in the 1860's.

[Mike Niendorff]

26. In rough terms:

(1) gut public services
(2) liquidate public resources
(3) declare that anyone who disagrees must "hate private property" and must secretly be a communist

(in other words: the same old bill of goods, with "new and improved" added to the packaging)


MDN