Quote Originally Posted by Redleg View Post
Now I beleive PJ was actually saying something else. The placing of one's retirement fund into only one type of market is a poor choice. For instance if the 401K has multiple choices (which most do) one should place part in stocks, part in bonds, and part in cash account (normally earns a very small % on interest.) This would protect the investor regardless of how small his investment is from taking a loss that is to severe, unless of course the whole finicial market crashes completely.
Agreed. But this still doesn't address people who don't invest wisely, or don't have the money to significantly diversify meaningfully, or save up just enough for retirement on their low income job and can't survive a 15 or 20% dip in the market, even if it only hits part of their investment.

So people should not take any responsiblity at all for where they invest their money and savings? Now my postion is that people need to take responsibility for what they had control of and could of done something about.
People who gamble absolutely should take responsibility for what happens to their money. That's what the stock market is, gambling. There is no guaranteed return on your investment. That is why it should not be the system everyone is forced to participate in and take their chances at wiping out or being impoverished at retirement age. And why this is not a good system to propose for everyone on the national level and just hope that all the people on the street "taking personal responsibility" for their mistakes or bad luck doesn't translate into a crime wave, the return of all kinds of squalor condition diseases, or rioting.

So are you advocating that people take no responsiblity for their lives? If so that is an extremely weak positon.
This claim is a complete invention on your part.

If you think Social Security is all that - it was once, but as we all know the government has been robbing from this cookie jar.
So the solution is to force everyone to have no option but to put their money in the private market, where a lot of private interests were robbing and defrauding the cookie jar?

And why did this happen? Was it because of a world wide economic collaspe in the 1920's that no country was actually prepared for?
There were no homeless problems or crime and disease problems from impoverished populations in the U.S. except in the 1920's? All those people should have just taken personal responsibility and died quietly in a gutter somewhere.