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For your comments... This doesn't fit into a 10 second sound bite so it wont be disscussed this election.

I don't post very often, would like your comments and a discussion here on FR.

dear lynn,

And will anybody be surprised, a few years from now, when baby boom slackers whine for a federal solution to their financial mess?

you discredit your analysis by printing this SLUR

The article is based on the assumption that most people are too stupid to educate themselves as to how to invest properly for retirement. The best investment book for the neophyte is called A Random Walk Down Wall Street. In it there are sample portfolios for various times in an investors life. The book goes over many of the issues the above article seems to rail against and instructs you how to avoid making those mistakes.

Even listening to radio financial advisors such as Bob Brinker would give you rules such as invest in no-load mutual funds that have low expense ratios. Use index funds because most mutual funds (ie. professional investors) fail to beat the market indexs. Never invest more than 5% of your total portfolio (that's savings, bonds, equities) in a single stock. That rule alone would have saved Enron employees thousands of dollars. So why should we worry about a system when the information to protect your wealth is out there.

The 401K and SEP IRA have been one of the best things to come along in a long time. Of course there would be no need for any of these things if our tax system didn't steal all of our money. If we had no income tax and only paid a sales tax then you would have no need for 401K plans and retirement plans and all savings would be tax free.

Pensions are the worst thing. Think of Enron, if they had a pension plan do you think that when they defaulted there would be a dime left in the pension plan? Look at IBM they just recently changed the pension payout that basically screwed retirees with the longest contribution history to the pension fund. Pension funds continually get raided by their corporate overseers. 401Ks are owned by the individual. The company you work for has no claim whatsoever to the money inside it.
What the article fails to realize is that while you can come up with horror stories of foolish investors loosing their retirement savings. There are also stories of people making a killing in their 401K. The system has to be looked at statistically are people on average able to save for retirement as compared to when we had pension plans. You would need to account for all the bankrupt companies and corrupt unions. In the end people able to save for their own retirement will enjoy security and independence in the twilight of their lives. People who do not will have to continue to find gainful employment or live off the charity of others.