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03/22/2005: "Your Ownership Dinghy"

The right wing loves to pile on to words with high positives. Think of it as marketing 101. If you’re trying to sell soap, for example, you create as many connections as possible between your personal cleaning product an words that people find attractive, that the majority of people will report positive perceptions for, words like “fresh.” Witness “Zest.” Similarly, the right wing has latched onto a couple of high positive words and are relentlessly on message with them. You probably know just what words I mean. The one we’ve been hearing the longest is “jobs.” Who could be opposed to “jobs.” Of course, in the context they use the term, their meaning is closer to “greed” and even “theft,” as in theft of the wealth of future generations by loading them up with debt and using the proceeds of these loans to create artificial prosperity. Another right wing favorite is “life,” a word much in the news lately. The word for today, though, is “ownership.” Like “jobs,” “ownership” carries high-positives in focus group discussion. It carries the impression of control, value, and wealth. Also like “jobs,” the real meaning of the term, in the context of its usage, is quite different, something like “on your own.” If the sum of your benefit is the retirement account you own, it had better be enough because that’s all there’s going to be! And because all retirement funds are locked up in individual accounts, there is nothing to cover extraordinary needs, the situation where, for no fault of their own, a person experiences personal disaster. Here’s an analogy I find to be particularly apt. Think of social security as a cruise ship. If you’re out on the open ocean, you want to be in a large, sturdy boat that will readily whether the inevitable storms. Do you own the ship? Nope. If everyone owns their retirement, they’re not in big ships (except for the Bill Gates’ of the world), but in little dinghies (a small craft like a lifeboat). It has to be one or the other – there isn’t enough money to buy both the private dinghies and, for those whose little boat got swamped in a storm, a big rescue ship. Having just spent a week on a very nice ship that cruised the Pacific, I can tell you that spending that time in a private dinghy wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun, particularly when it rained. On the other hand, it would have been cool to wear a navy hat and make everyone call me Cap’n!