In his inaugural address, President Bush again stressed his desire to “build an ownership society.”

“By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear and make our society more prosperous and just and equal,” he said.

His main thrust is to allow workers to divert some of their Social Security contributions to private accounts investing in stocks and bonds. While he hasn’t offered details, reports of White House discussions indicate contributions might be limited to $1,000 a year, which is a pretty modest level of ownership.

Are there other ways to advance the ownership society?

I think so — assuming the goal is to get people to save and invest more, and to exercise more control over the things they own. Here’s a quick look at my wish list:

• Lift IRA ceilings. This year an individual can contribute only $4,000 (or $4,500 for those older than 50 by year-end). Lifting these ceilings — or removing them altogether — would encourage Americans to save more in these tax-favored retirement accounts.
• Remove employers from the 401(k) business. Currently, you can open one of these valuable, tax-favored retirement accounts only if your boss offers it. Replacing them with a kind of super-IRA would make them available to everyone, and it would give participants virtually unlimited investing options instead of a handful of mutual funds picked by the boss. Many workers decline to participate because their options are not very good.

Employers should still be allowed to match workers’ contributions. I suspect competition for good workers would force them to kick in.

• Make retirement-plan participation automatic. Whether the current 401(k) system is kept or changed, employees should be enrolled automatically, while retaining the right to opt out. Several academic studies have shown this leads to higher participation.
• Remove states from 529 plans. These tax-free college-savings plans, set up by states, are a nightmarish tangle of options. More Americans would participate if 529s were as simple and straightforward for them to set up as IRAs. Also, participants should be allowed to choose any investment and not be limited, as they are now, to those specified by the states.
• Stop taxing reinvested distributions. Every year, mutual funds pay out billions in interest, dividends and capital gains realized by the fund during the year. Investors are taxed on these even if they have the money automatically reinvested in more fund shares, as most do.

If these annual tax bills were eliminated, shareholders would have more money to invest. Uncle Sam would still get his share — but not until shares purchased this way were eventually sold, triggering capital gains tax.

• Stop taxing investment turnover. Currently, capital gains tax is triggered whenever an investor sells any holding at a profit. To avoid such taxes, many investors postpone selling investments that are doing poorly.

The tax should be waived if proceeds from a sale are reinvested within a reasonable time, such as 30 days. This would encourage people to invest more. And it would encourage them to move money out of losers and into potential winners, enhancing economic efficiency. Profits would continue to be taxed — but not until an investor is truly cashing out.

• Improve disclosure. To make decisions, investors need to know more about the companies they own. Currently, public companies are not required, for example, to disclose much detail about the performance of individual operating units. Shareholders, thus, have only a sketchy idea of their companies’ strengths and weaknesses.

Exposing weakness would encourage shareholders to demand improvements. And it would open the door to competitors who could do better, which would be good for the economy.

• Empower the owners. More often than not, directors of corporations and mutual fund companies are the de facto choices of insiders such as the chief executives the directors are supposed to oversee. Owners — the shareholders — should have the right to get their own nominees on the company-issued ballots in board elections. Currently, they don’t.