An ownership society values responsibility, liberty, and property. Individuals are empowered 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.

For more information on the many benefits of an ownership society, see David Boaz's essay, "Defining an Ownership Society."

Listen to David Boaz discuss the benefits of an ownership society on NPR's All Things Considered.

Latest News

Wisdom from the Young
A deputy editor of the Stanford Review discusses the ideal of an ownership society, observing "What all of these reforms have in common is the idea that money is more efficiently used for the improvement of society when it is in the hands of those to whom it belongs." For example, "Forcing the Department of Education to compete with private schools or lose funding, forces them to be more efficient and more responsive. Uh oh, sounds like that darn "invisible hand" again."

Crane to Rove: Ownership, Ownership, Ownership!
"Bringing his call for adding more personal control to Social Security retirement funds to his 20th state in two months, President Bush told a receptive audience here Tuesday it was time for Congress 'to stop playing politics with the issue and come to the table,'" reports the Charleston Gazette. "Franklin D. Roosevelt 'did a good thing when he created Social Security,' Bush said. 'It's worked well, but now it needs to change. ... People ought to be able to consider having the opportunity to have more control over their retirement funds -- to watch them grow in a savings account.'"

In a memorandum from Cato's president Ed Crane to the President's Senior Advisor Karl Rove, Crane criticizes the Bush administration's emphasis on solvency, rates of returns and transitional costs when the real focus should be on ownership and freedom when advocating reform: "Seriously, this should be an emotional issue about liberty and opportunity, not solvency dates. The concept of an Ownership Society is brilliant. Unlike the New Deal, the New Frontier or the Great Society, Ownership Society actually means something -- something integral to the essence of America. That essence is a respect for the dignity of the individual, which is axiomatically enhanced when one has more control over one's life. That is what personal accounts provide."

Crane adds: "In addition to more control over your life through personal accounts, all the ancillary benefits of ownership should be enthusiastically played up by the President: the pride one has in having provided for his or her own retirement, as opposed to being a supplicant of the state; the security of knowing the government can't take the money away (which they do whenever they raise the payroll tax or push back the retirement age); and perhaps most of all, the knowledge that your loved ones may benefit from your labor."

Ownership Society and Education
"[Connecticut] State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday that he plans to sue the U.S. Department of Education over its failure to fully fund the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, which he said violates the act itself and the U.S. Constitution," writes the New London Day.

"In a press conference at his office, Blumenthal said he expected other states to join the suit, which will charge the department with failing to abide by legal language that says the government cannot impose new educational requirements on schools if it does not pay for them. 'Essentially,' he said, 'we want the federal government to obey the law and provide funding for what it mandates.'"

In "'Ownership Society' Should Start with Education," David Salisbury, director of Cato's Center for Educational Freedom, and Neal McCluskey, policy analyst with the Center for Educational Freedom, argue: "Unfortunately, President Bush's signature education legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, has had the effect of concentrating control over children's education in the worst of all places: Washington, D.C. Under that law, not only are most children still forced to go to government schools, but local and state governments -- the levels of government closest to parents -- have been stripped of control over everything from curricula to teacher qualifications, with that power now resting with the federal government. Federal officials now dictate that all public school children must take reading and math tests in third through eighth grade, as well as once in high school, and that children must be taught from a federally approved, 'scientifically based,' curriculum."

Get Real
Star Parker, president of CURE (Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education) and advocate of personal responsibility, writes about the Ownership Society for Scripps Howard News Service. In her article "Let's get real about Social Security and Medicare," Ms. Parker reminds us that "through Social Security and Medicare, Americans have turned large aspects of their lives over to government control. If the massive tax transfers that fund these programs remained in the hands of private citizens, the power of individual choice and the creativity of the marketplace would deliver the same quality products that free markets and personal control deliver to all other aspects of our lives." For more wisdom from Star Parker, see Cato's forum on her recent book, Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What You Can Do About It.