by Flemming Funch
Via Wealth Bondage, here's this from the Cato Institute: An ownership society is a society that values responsibility, liberty, and property. An ownership society empowers individuals by freeing them from dependence on government handouts and making them owners instead, in control of their own lives and destinies. In the ownership society, patients control their own health care, parents control their own children's education, and workers control their retirement savings. Yes, too bad you don't qualify. What a chilling bunch of crappy double-speak. What it means is: This is why you have no healthcare insurance, why the public schools are enormously underfunded, and why the social security fund has been depleted years ago. It's because you're supposed to do all of those things yourself. Because that's what it means to be a free person: that the government isn't doing anything for you. If you pay for everything yourself, you're in control. I guess that's a particularly American illusion. Or a conservative political ideology, or whatever we'll call it. Pretty much from the same people who've increased the U.S. taxation and national debt and corporate welfare, orders of magnitude more than any of their democratic counterparts who were actually expected to do so. A couple of Republican presidents have succeeded more than any communist revolution would have. The reality of an ownership society unfortunately became that for 99% of the population, somebody else than you owns you and the output of your creativity and productivity.
If it were for real, it would be nice of course. I.e. that people can be in control of their own lives, and own what they do. And be responsible and free. But that requires real ownership and real freedom. Not just that the government takes half your money and doesn't give it back, and you're free to have a mortgage and buy a big car on credit, and that you just barely can afford your health insurance. No, rather real freedom and real democracy and ability to live by your own devices. Owning your own life. Co-owning society. Would be a nice idea.
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