The Republican National Convention is under way in New York City - the capital of capital, the epicenter of economic exuberance. This year, the Republican Party has a historic opportunity to capture the hearts, hopes and imagination not only of current shareholders but also the rest of America yearning to participate in the Ownership Society. By offering a pro-growth, pro-family tax system and creating opportunities for all Americans to own their own retirement accounts, their children's education and their own homes, Republicans have an opportunity to garner support from the Democratic base and reshape the political landscape for decades to come.

Workers are no longer concerned merely with wages and salaries; they are increasingly interested in saving and investing - in the process of wealth creation. One can't get rich on wages; the only way to get rich is to earn, save and invest.

I cringe when I hear the rhetoric of class warfare, which seems to have become the raison d'etre of the Democratic Party, whether they are ranting about "the people versus the powerful" or increasing taxes on the "top 2 percent." They just don't get it. The American dream is to become rich, not to punish them.

It's not that Democrats hate the rich - so many of them are rich - or that they care more about the poor; they have little faith in poor people and think the only way the poor can improve their lot in life is for government to take from the rich and redistribute the lucre to them.

Poverty in America is a disgrace and must be addressed through expanding ownership opportunities. It is also, in many cases, more a function of the life cycle than one's station in life. Research shows that as much as 25 percent to 40 percent of Americans move from one income quintile to another in a single year. Today's laborer is tomorrow's investor, owner and job creator. The worker and investor is the same person, just at different stages of his or her life.

Stock ownership in America has expanded dramatically and is at all-time highs with well over half of American households owning stock. While stock ownership has expanded dramatically in America, far too many Americans are still being left out of this new prosperity. After many American workers are through paying Social Security payroll taxes, they have no discretionary income left to save. The problem is not capitalism run amok or too much capitalism, as Democrats suggest, but rather that some areas of the economy are starving for lack of access to capital.

The day after the Census Bureau released its annual report recently, the headline in USA Today proclaimed, "Poverty rose by million." These numbers are overstated and misleading. For one, we should not measure poverty by income but by standard of living. Roughly 50 percent of people living in "poverty" own a home. Two-thirds have air conditioning, 97 percent own a television - 50 percent of those own two - and 26 percent are obese. We don't have a poverty problem in the traditional sense of the word; poverty in this country generally does not mean people are going without food, clothing or shelter. More importantly our poverty numbers, because they are based on income, omit many kinds of cash and noncash income such as Medicaid, food stamps and public housing.

That said, we can do better, and indeed we must. In the past we made the mistake of treating poverty as if it were a chronic disease from which we could alleviate the pain but for which there was no cure. We created welfare and entitlement programs to ease the pain of poverty. Social Security was originally designed to save older Americans from poverty, and for years it did just that. But today, 80 percent of workers are paying more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. The program that was designed to keep seniors out of poverty is preventing too many workers from escaping it.

We reformed our welfare laws by enacting welfare-to-work to restore incentives to work, but that was not enough. Now we must take the next step and make it possible for all workers to save for their homes, their education and their retirement. Continued...