Little remarked in criticisms of the Bush Social Security revision is the plan's implication for ownership of the economy.
Consider a simple case: someone works for 40 years (typically unreasonably short other than in the learned professions) and salts away the allowed $2000 a year (perhaps generous) at 7% yield (which is in the range covered by stocks and bonds). At retirement, they have put away $300,000 or so. If they retire later or earlier, if the yield is higher or lower, if they earn more or less, then the amount in their Bush account will be some larger or smaller number. If you say $1000 for the first 20 years, and $2000 for next 25, and 5% interest, perhaps only $200,000 is in the account. If you say $2000 a year for 45 years, and 8% interest, then $800,000 is in the account. There is a large sensitivity to how much money is put away in the early years.
Now multiply this by a hundred million people. That's $20 or $80 trillion dollars. That's a huge amount relative to the current stock and bond market, and THE REST OF IT IS BELOW THE LINE
and it's all invested by the Social Security Administration, perhaps through the medium of "independent" private investment companies. That's right, under the Bush Plan the government will own corporate America. (Correspondingly, because the SSA cannot afford to have major losses, Fortune 500 owns them. If managerial incompetence threatens bankruptcy, management can go to Congress and say 'change the rules, or we go under and SSI takes a big hit'.)
The outcome of the Bush Social Security Plan is that the Social Security Administration owns corporate America, and as much elsewhere as they can get their hands on. One of the important features of corporate state socialism is building closer ties between big business and government. Here we have the ultimate such tie--Fortune 500 companies and the government will become one and the same.
Furthermore, because the amount of money involved is really big relative to the value of current stock market holdings, any investment grade company can raise money beyond the wildest dreams of avarice simply by floating more stock on a regular basis. Are you a major corporation in competition with mom and pop stores? With all this money you can engage in destructive competition and crush them like the bugs they are. Do you have difficulties with obstreperous unions and seniority? With this much money you can build new plants and relocate on a regular basis.
And who will buy all this stock when people want to cash in and retire? Oh, by then the plan's designers will be dead, and circumstances will have been changed. The one obvious group of little-people beneficiaries are thrifty people who invest on their own. With this tonnage of cash rolling in, there will be huge increases in the price of some stocks, so long as you sell before the SSA reserve fuind tops off.
There is a wedge issue here, because many traditional conservatives are going to look at the ownership implication, and know Communism done the American way when they see it.