Everyone an Owner
A new economic message for Democrats (unless Republicans beat them to it)
In the wake of the 2024 election, Democrats are facing a hard truth: Americans are hurting, want answers, and aren’t buying what the Democrats are selling. Wages have stayed flat, costs up, and working people are scraping by. Republicans responded with a simple, direct message: kick out immigrants, slap on tariffs, and watch prosperity return. Wrong as that answer may be, it met people where they are, offering a story that felt real to their pain.
What did Democrats offer? Policies. Expansions of the child tax credit, support for home ownership, incentives for small business. These are good and important ideas, but they’re not a story. The best policies don’t stand on their merit alone—they must be framed within a narrative that names the problem and offers a clear solution. Democrats need more than policies; they need a story that says, “Here’s the problem, here’s who’s holding you back, and here’s how we’ll make it right.”
An Economy for Built for Them, Not You
So here’s a story. The problem isn’t hard to see: a few at the top are capturing more wealth than ever, while everyone else struggles. The richest Americans didn’t get there by cashing paychecks; they got there by signing them.
It hasn’t always been this tough for paycheck-collecting Americans. A generation ago, ordinary Americans had a shot at building real wealth through public stock ownership, an invention that let middle class Americans get rich as public companies grew. Many families in Texas made their retirements not just from wages, but from public stocks in companies like Texaco. Back then, stocks in America’s fastest-growing companies were public, broadly accessible, and available to anyone who could save a little.
But today’s fortunes aren’t built in public markets. The wealthiest Americans are getting rich through exclusive private investments, in private companies and closed-door deals that regular folks don’t have access to. It’s a rigged game where the wealthy grow wealthier by owning assets the rest of us can’t touch. That leaves most Americans working for paychecks that don’t stretch as far as they used to. And as Alexander Hamilton put it, “power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”
The Right Diagnosis, the Wrong Cure
The far left of the Democratic Party has identified this problem clearly, and rightly so. They’ve called out the concentration of wealth and power, and they’re right to say it’s holding people back. But their solution—endless redistribution through taxes—isn’t the right cure. We don’t need a system where the government steps with perpetual redistribution. What we need is a system where power and wealth are shared from the start.
A Different Path: Property-Owning Democracy and Distributism
This vision isn’t new. Philosopher John Rawls outlined it as property-owning democracy, where ownership is spread broadly from the outset, preventing concentrations of power and wealth. The idea is simple: we don’t wait for wealth to concentrate and then redistribute it; we create an economy where everyone has a real shot at owning wealth-producing assets from the beginning.
This idea has deep roots in Catholic teaching, too. Distributism, as it’s known, doesn’t see capitalism and socialism as a spectrum. It envisions a third way, where productive assets are broadly owned by people, so that no one is dependent on a wage alone. In this model—a critique of socialism and capitalism—ordinary people own the assets that generate wealth.
This isn’t just theory. In the U.S., millions of Americans have become owners through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), where employees become partial owners in the companies they build. Look at worker cooperatives, where employees have a voice and a financial stake in the company’s success. Or purpose trusts, an innovative model where companies are held in trust, not just for shareholders, but for the benefit of employees, customers, and communities. These are real, working models of an economy where everyone has a chance to own a piece of what they create.
A Platform for Every American to Own
Imagine if Democrats embraced this vision: an ownership economy where every American has a stake in their work, their community, and their future. A real ownership economy could expand ESOPs, incentivize more worker cooperatives, and promote purpose trusts, turning businesses into sources of shared wealth, not just profit machines for a few at the top.
This isn’t a dream, and it’s not radical. Countries like the UK and Canada are already doing this. They’re building programs that make it easier for people to become owners, and it’s working. Here in the U.S., these models are quietly succeeding across the country. We should scale them across the country and give every American the chance to own a piece of the economy they help build.
A Challenge to Both Parties
This isn’t about handouts, and it shouldn’t be partisan. Conservatives champion the idea of strong communities, personal investment, and limited reliance on the state. Ownership fosters self-reliance and independence. When people own the places they work, they don’t just take home a paycheck—they take home wealth, pride, and investment in their communities. This is what made “small landowners” what Thomas Jefferson called “the most precious part of a state.” What land was then, our workplaces are today.
The American Dream was never about amassing wealth for a few while the rest are left behind. It’s about ownership, self-reliance, and opportunity. If we want to revive that Dream, we need to build an ownership economy. And if Democrats don’t lead the charge, Republicans should. One way or another, Americans deserve to be more than workers—they deserve to be owners.
