If the government takes my 401k, I’m getting it back. I may have to go “Jesse James” on em to get it, but I’m gonna get it back!
If you read the fine print, they already own it. None of that money is really yours until you pay all taxes due on it. Contributing is like throwing your money over a high fence and hoping the government will throw it back to you some day, a little at a time, plus interest.
All they have to do now is claim the public is too ignorant to manage its own money and that all private retirement account balances will be converted to Federal Savings Bonds, redeemable at age 67 and paying "reasonable" rates of interest. Coupled with an Obamacare-like media campaign claiming that only the "greedy" would try to punish our most vulnerable citizens in their time of need by keeping control of their own money when they already have too much, and they are done - trillions of new dollars appear to buy votes with until the next crisis comes.
They can't do it under a President Trump, though. They needed Jeb's help, and he didn't follow through... :)