Ownership society is a slogan for a model of society promoted by former United States president George W. Bush. It takes as lead values personal responsibility, economic liberty, and the owning of property. The ownership society discussed by Bush also extends to certain proposals of specific models of health care and social security. History The term appears to have been used originally by President Bush (for example in a speech February 20, 2003 in Kennesaw, Georgia) as a phrase to rally support for his tax-cut proposals. From 2004 Bush supporters described the ownership society in much broader and more ambitious terms, including specific policy proposals concerning home ownership, medicine, education and savings. The idea that the welfare of individuals is directly related to their ability to control their own lives and wealth, rather than relying on government transfer payments, is a longstanding one, particularly in British conservatism. In a modern form its implementation was developed as a main plank of Thatcherism, and is traced back to David Howell, before 1970, with help from the phrase-maker Peter Drucker. In political practice under Margaret Thatcher's administration, it was implemented by measures such as the sale at affordable prices of public housing to tenants (right to buy program), and privatization. Ownership and control As formulated by the Cato Institute (see original quote and external link below), the goals are that patients have control of [decisions on] their personal health care, parents control [i.e. have power over] their children's education, and workers control [i.e. have some responsibility for the investment of, or explicit property rights in] their retirement savings. Here the comments in brackets are an interpretation or paraphrase, consistent with a generalised idea of ownership. The conceptual link here is by means of the idea that private property, the most familiar and everyday form of ownership, is being extended. Control is closely associated with ownership in that sense. This Cato Institute formulation is not, however, in terms of positive policies. It is more accurately a definition of ownership by taking the state out of the loop. So, for example, in health care ownership is not being defined just on the basis of informed consent. There is no real originality, politically speaking, in the connection made between individual ownership of property and political stake-holding. This was an idea discussed in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. (For example, that the franchise should only