Imagine that someone climbs up to the fortieth story of an office tower and opens a bag containing one million dollars and then sends it out the window like confetti in a victory parade.

Does it matter whether there are 100 people standing below or 1000 people?

It matters if you are one of 100 rather than one of 1000.

Can you increase the number of dollars falling from the heavens by increasing the number of folks fighting for the dollars down below?

The Ownership Society is already fully owned by someone. The stocks that people might buy are already owned and have some expected dividend. That dividend does not change merely because of the last price at which the claim to that dividend was exchanged.

Bush will dilute the aggregate security of Americans by removing some of them from the Social Security system; plain and simple. The other effect is that the current owners of equities will be able to capitalize on an increased supply of idiot buyers wanting to buy stock.

Everyone should know that it is the continued inflow of a greater fool that makes stocks like Enron to keep floating in the stratosphere. Was Enron the only stock that was way out of whack? Just start looking at Fannie Mae, and perhaps every single company in the S&P 500 that has a defined benefit plan. Look at the US Airways Pension/Bankruptcy example for a clue to the future.

The incremental bite out of Social Security will be just the first. It will continue and it will be designed to prop up stocks until the Social Security system is itself declared dead, then, like magic, the stock market will run out of a supply of greater fools and then the stock prices will fall, if it has not done so earlier.