The Ownership Society doesn't even try to spread the risks and rewards of the new economy among all Americans. Instead, it simply magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today's winner-take-all economy. If you are healthy or wealthy or just plain lucky, then you will become more so. If you are poor or sick or catch a bad break, you will have nobody to look to for help. That's not a recipe for sustained economic growth or the maintenance of the middle class. It's certainly not a recipe for social cohesion. It runs counter to those values that say we have a stake in each other's success.
--Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope,
New York: Vintage Books, July 2008. 213.
New York: Vintage Books, July 2008. 213.
Hmmmm.
I have to ponder this for a bit; although I agree, to a certain extent, with this premise, I have some caveats...
Meanwhile, here's what Michael Moore has to say:
Michael Moore on "Ownership Society"
mmflint (Michael Moore) says,
The wealthy that have been calling the shots here for so long, their party has been in power for 20 of the last 28 years -- the Republican party -- and I think that they know that they're probably on their way out ... they're like guests at a dinner trying to steal the silverware on their way out the door. ... Everything that's going on right now, all the hiring that the Treasury Department is doing, all the consultants they're bringing in, all the million dollar contracts -- these people are just going to get rich over and over again as they try to pull themselves out of a mess that they created because it was one big check-kiting scheme: Using money they didn't have to buy other money to make more money. Again, if an average person did that, they'd be in jail, but not these guys.
-- Michael Moore on Larry King Live, Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
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