Stock Performance Undercuts Bush's Vision of Ownership Society

Stock Performance Undercuts Bush's Vision of Ownership Society

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush has tried to sell Americans on an ``ownership society'' that would create more wealth -- and more Republicans in the process. The stock market hasn't accommodated.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index -- the benchmark for American equities -- is down 2.8 percent since Bush took office five years and two months ago. That's the worst performance during the same stage of any two-term administration in the past half century except that of Richard M. Nixon.

The market's performance is undermining a central goal of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser. Borrowing from Margaret Thatcher's privatization push in the U.K. in the 1980s, Rove's theory is that if more Americans make their own financial decisions and the last vestiges of a welfare state are dismantled, a culture of ownership will spring up. The ranks of Republican voters, the idea goes, will swell along with it.

``The ownership society looked very attractive on paper,'' said Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ``But once you flesh out the changes, people become very concerned because they are already fearful that their economic security is slipping away,''
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=amzVdnivhgdY&refer=us

…of Herbert Hoover.

Same (so-called) principles...same results.

when the poor baby wanted to be the 2nd Reagon. :rofl:

that I would ever agree with a thought like that. Back then, Nixxon represented the absolute bottom of how low things can go.

what has been the market performance since 9/11?

neoliberal society in which 'choice' is a fundamental charactertic. The 'Third' Way" is but form of this society.

......Rove's theory is that if more Americans make their own financial decisions

Bush's idea of ownership has more to do with slavery and plantations than with a prosperous, stock-owning middle class.

ON paper it always works out..and there's money left over :)

BUT when the rubber hits the road, most people run out of money before they run out of expenses..

when half of them can't even balance a check book?

The people are just following the example of the Borrow and Spend GOP. Depression here we come! Wheee!!!

:sarcasm:

How are people supposed to figure out GAAT accrual accounting if they can balance a checkbook, but aren't accountants or MBAs?

& making cronies rich, the * vision is right on.

It was NEVER about more Americans gaining ownership.

When are people going to accept that EVERYTHING coming out of the mouths of the BushCO/neoconster regime is a damn lie?
:shrug:

Yes, like the minimum wage, social security, worker's compensation, mine safety, the FDIC.

It's all got to go so people can feel they own a part of his "society".

Not included, of course, are the corporate tax breaks, public land giveaways and beefy defense contracts. Those "last vestiges" must stay.

on big buy and big sell orders.

........God Bless America......

of the most powerful and already uber-wealthy.