The ownership society

The brothers judd have the ownership society archives (via Thought Mesh). Arnold Kling quotes Brad DeLong:

Ten years down the road or so, there will be pressure on Congress to allow people to borrow against their private accounts, or to withdraw them to buy a house, or to use them to meet unexpected medical expenses. Congress will bow to that pressure--it's their money, after all. And in the end a lot of people will hit 70 having drained their Social Security private account dry. The rest of us will then have to decide whether to let them starve on the street, or tax ourselves a second time to give them Social Security benefits. As Dick Schmalensee says, "You have to ask yourself not just, 'Is this good policy?' but 'Will this still be good policy after Congress does its worst to it?'" The Medicare drug benefit and the corporate tax boondoggle are powerful evidence that the Bush administration holds no leashes to use to control what this Congress does to policy proposals, while lobbyists can make this Congress roll over and beg.

Kling responds,

I guess I would rather give people their money, let them make mistakes, and take a chance on how Congress decides to deal with those mistakes. If we are lucky, the set of people who makes big mistakes and comes whining to Congress about it will not be large. Instead, to not allow private accounts amounts to pre-emptively giving everyone's money to Congress, which raises the potential for mischief by at least an order of magnitude.

Sounds good to me.