Bush’s big ideas are to make you save up so you can pay for the services that the citizens of every other industrialized nation get from their governments :

With the huge baby boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg you can call your own, and government can never take away.
. . .
We will offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts, and provide direct help for low-income Americans to purchase them.

These accounts give workers the security of insurance against major illness, the opportunity to save tax-free for routine health expenses and the freedom of knowing you can take your account with you whenever you change jobs.

I wonder if Bush has ever had to lay all his bills out on the kitchen table and figure out which ones he can pay immediately and which ones can wait until the next paycheck? Or if he’s ever lived in an overcrowded apartment with hand-me-down furniture, eating the same thing six days a week because it’s cheaper? Or if he’s ever had to settle for a job slightly less shitty than the one he had in high school because there weren’t any jobs in the field he majored in? Of if he’s gone through the process of figuring out which generic brand products at the grocery store are as good as the name brands and which ones aren’t?

As most of you know, I’m not just describing poverty here. This is normal life for many Americans. Some live paycheck to paycheck, while others are able to pinch enough pennies to save a few bucks. Either way, most people don’t have thousands of dollars to spare.

Practically speaking, savings accounts for retirement and heath care a huge mistake, but for entirely separate reasons. With the latter, the rub is that health care is expensive. Let’s say you have an medical emergency with costs in the $20-30K range. How long would it take you to save that much? A few years? Even with the vague incentives, we’re still looking at a plan that’s the equivalent of asking every American to buy a new car that he/she may never drive.

The social security thing is a whole other ball of wax, which was best described by Paul Krugman one of the many other times Bush launched this loony crusade :

Social Security as we know it is a system in which each generation’s payroll taxes are mainly used to support the previous generation’s retirement. If contributions from younger workers go into personal accounts instead, the problem should be obvious: who will pay benefits to today’s retirees and older workers? It’s just arithmetic: 2-1=1. So privatization creates a financial hole that must be filled by slashing benefits, providing large financial transfers from the rest of the government or both.

So the idea of pumping the social security portion of our payroll taxes just doesn’t add up.

Bush thinks most Americans have extra money lying around that we can throw into private accounts. Well we don’t, and once Americans realize it [crossing my fingers now], Bush will join his dad in the ranks of former Presidents named “Bush” who don’t have a clue about the day to day lives of working Americans.