“In Free Enterprise … ‘Free’ is a Verb”: Enterprise and Asset-Accumulation Social Policy

Abstract

Since 1988 American social policy debates have been animated by key proposals to connect social security more fully to ownership. Both major political parties have adopted policies committed to the installation of ownership at the center of a reformed system of social security. Campaigning in the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush made repeated calls for an “ownership society” in which property ownership could unleash individual enterprise and economic vitality. “If you own something,” Bush explained, “you have a vital stake in the future … the more ownership there is in America … the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country” (Walczak et al. 2004; Boaz 2003). In slightly different terms, the Democratic Party has, stretching back to the first Clinton administration, also made the ownership of assets a key to the “revitalization” of social and economic security (Sherraden 2000).

Give them, literally, a share in America. Spread capitalism by spreading capital.

Robert Reich (Quoted in Brown and Beeferman 2001)