"Corporate Americans"

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted January 18, 2005.

I love the idea of people being able to own something ... People from all walks of life, all income levels are willing to take risks to start their own company. ... And I like the idea of people being able to say, I'm in charge of my own health care ... I particularly like the idea of a Social Security system that recognizes the importance and value of ownership.

– George Bush, on his "Ownership Society" agenda, Dec. 16, 2004

Every working person dreams of sharing in the nation's wealth, of owning their own home and controlling their own future. That dream is the hook on which President Bush's Ownership Society hangs — it's a visceral appeal to our naked self-interest. And even if you live on a commune, there's something compelling about relying on your own strong back and standing on your own two feet — forget about social contracts, collective risk and safety nets.

The Ownership Society represents a new form of distinctly right-wing economic populism. It turns the notion on its head; while liberals offer a populism that promises underserved groups that "We will stand with you against the heartless and powerful," the central theme of the Ownership Society is that we're all big capitalists just waiting to blossom — even the lowliest among us. If only we could get the yoke of taxes, asbestos litigation and regulations off our backs we would all be in a position to worry about losing a piece of our multi-million dollar estate to the "death tax." Forget about a semblance of economic justice, it's about giving you, the individual, the tools you need to beat your neighbor. And if you can't beat him, he'll beat you. It's a populism born in the Hobbesian belief that we all struggle alone in a world where life is nasty, brutish and short.

This is Bush's narrative that winds its way through cradle-to-grave issues as diverse as the move from universal public education to school vouchers, transitioning from Medicare to Health Savings Accounts and privatizing Social Security. The Ownership Society touches almost every major social program we've enacted since the New Deal.

Of course, the Ownership Society's policies — which President Bush will be selling hard in the coming months — won't do anything to add to the wealth of average families. As Lew Rockwell, founder of the Libertarian Mises Institute wrote in an e-mail, "The Ownership Society has become the rhetorical mask for the newest form of right-wing central planning." We know from experience how that impacts ordinary Americans.

”Entrepreneurial Effort”

While progressives seem to have seized on the artifice of the Ownership rhetoric, they haven't caught on to the fact that "Ownership" is simply a frame that further obliterates the line separating the interests of Joe Six-pack and William Three-martini.

But the narrative was on brilliant display at the White House economic forum in mid-December — a far-ranging debate among like-minded economists. During the summit the administration pitched both the Ownership Society and "tort reform" — a holdover from the first term — and we got a preview of how the right will approach the politics of what is essentially an unprecedented privatization plan.

Typical of the discourse was Susan Dudley, of George Mason University's laissez-faire Merkatus Center, explaining that corporate regulations cost American households $843 billion dollars per year. "Now you might say, 'Well it's not really households that are paying the costs of regulation,'" she said, anticipating the groans of skeptics, "'it's really the big businesses.' But that's not really true. Small entrepreneurs ... who are the engine of economic growth in America bear the greatest burden."

Throughout the event, the panelists' language touted the great virtues of a mythic economic everyman — inverted populism. So Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute — funded by the usual right-wing financiers — argued that our current healthcare system was "paternalistic" and that it was "crucial to put the genius of the American consumer to work ... "

And Bob Nardelli, the CEO of Home Depot, added: "While the lawyers are attacking corporate America, it's corporate Americans that are suffering." There are no corporate titans in the Ownership Society, just corporate Americans like you and me.

When one expert, Jim Glassman of JP Morgan Chase, forgot the theme and started prattling on about how "markets would worry about" Social Security, President Bush cut him off by asking: "Why do markets matter to the person out there looking for work?"

Bush's prompt reminded us that it wasn't Wall Street driving the agenda; it was all about regular folks and the "small businesses" where they work — defined loosely enough that a publicly traded multinational with 500 employees would qualify.

Interspersed among the experts was the usual assortment of normal, working Americans who could relate to the agenda of the mightiest of moguls, including Hilda Bankston, a naturalized immigrant from Guatemala, and Sandy Jacques, who The New York Times described as a single mother from Iowa who would "speak on the advantages that private accounts could offer to divorced spouses and widows." In fact, as Josh Marshall pointed out, Jacques is a political operative tied to anti-tax zealot Dick Armey's Citizens for a Sound Economy.

Joshua Holland is a fair-trade activist, a student of international relations at the University of Southern California and Editor-in-Chief of the Trojan Horse, USC's lefty muckraker.

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