What never gets mentioned by Social Security enemies or Pinochet apologists (and Kissinger is certainly both) is that the Chilean pension model is described by Chileans themselves as el gran fracaso - "the great failure." That's why no one else will adopt it - and the few countries that did, have since abandoned it.
Others call it el gran fraude - "the great fraud." This is mainly because each retirement account pays 30% commissions from the top. Consequently, 70-80% of Chilean retirees end up with nothing or close to it in their pension accounts and depend on a state subsidy to cover the minimum $200 pension Chilean law guarantees - and Chile's expensive.
Pinochet, btw, left out the police and military from the scheme; they get state-run, $1,500 pensions. Sweet.
So that's a "private" pension system for you: the profits are private, but the state, in Chile's case, spends 6% of GDP - one third of its federal budget - on bailing out retirees with hollowed-out pensions.
Chile can afford to do this thanks to its copper - which nets it $40 billion in exports and mostly remains state-owned. Nevertheless, calls for a switch to a national social security system, or least a choice between the two, have been growing.
Neighboring Argentina had a similar experience. After 14 years of having to bail out private pensions (while the pension funds wired billions overseas), the country nationalized its pensions in 2008. Argentina did keep the private option - but almost nobody takes it. Minimum pensions in Argentina thus rose from $50 a month to $440 by the time Cristina Kirchner left office in 2015.
The Buenos Aires Stock Exchange (which used to treat pension funds as its dumping ground for unwanted shares) doesn't like it, and they're hoping the newly elected right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, re-privatizes them (as he proposed doing years ago). He hasn't tried to yet; but seniors' advocates will definitely need to keep an eye on him.
Thanks again, Octafish, for providing the essential backstory - which so few people know about, but should.
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