Unfortunately President Reagan NEVER followed through with the creative and innovative thinking put forth by the Task Force For Economic Justice that “everyone can own a piece of the action.” Reagan states: “I’ve long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership among our people, and the expectation that anyone’s child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shop owners and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent property-owning citizens. A mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine…I can’t help believe that in the future we’ll see in the United States and throughout the Western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step––employee ownership. It’s a path that benefits a free people. Walter Reuther was one of the first major leaders to advocate that management and labor shift away from battling over wage and benefit levels to a cooperative effort aimed at sharing in the ownership of the new wealth being produced. He was looking far beyond the next contract. There was a story that Reuther was touring a highly-automated Ford assembly plant when someone said ‘Walter, you’re going to have a hard time collecting union dues from all of these machines.’ And Reuther simply shot back ‘not as hard a time as you are going to have selling them cars.’ Reuther was killed in a tragic plane accident in 1970 so he didn’t live to see the passage of legislation sponsored by Senator Russell Long of Louisiana that provides incentives for employee stock ownership plans, or as we call them ESOPs. In recent years, we’ve witnessed medium size and even some large corporations being purchased in part or in whole by their employees…now manned by employees who are also owners. The energy and vitality unleashed by this kind of peoples’ capitalism, free and open markets, robust competition and broad based ownership of the means of production can serve this nation well. It can also be a boon, if given a chance, to the people of the developing world…”
