Boy, you got that right. I find that same attitude within the U.S., too. People like me who know how to design and build things are looked down upon by the symbol-manipulators that make up the bulk of the American economy these days. We're condidered mere "workmen", less deserving of respect than...say...a teacher or an office worker.
Well, I'm perfectly willing to see who needs whom ;-)
So investing has devolved from a science to a crap shoot. In that most insidious way, the government has robbed its citizens of the ability to enjoy financial stability, and (even more abhorrent) the ability to function as an individual on a level financial playing field.
A good example is the politically-motivated continuing attack on energy-trading companies. The democRATS twisted last year's Enron bankruptcy into an attack on all energy companies, the republican party, and capitalism itself. Their purpose was (and still is) to garner electoral votes in the 2004 election out West.
...the Democratic story is simple. A bunch of crooks called Enron cut off your power and extorted your money to turn it back on. And guess what? George W. Bush let them get away with it. Wait for the thirty second spots, and see how easy it is to communicate this idea.
You can see that this propaganda really caught on in the recent California elections. It doesn't bother the RATs at all that millions of widows and orphans who had invested in "safe" utility stocks were devastated when those stocks lost up to 95% of their value. Champion of the working people, indeed.
Those energy stocks are starting to come back now that the truth is slowly leaking out: The Utility companies and energy traders did nothing (or very little) wrong. But for many of the over-50 set who had prudently invested in those stocks, they will not live long enough to recover the money they lost at the hands of the democRAT-inspired market crash.
All in all, I see America becoming more like Russia, where obtaining any kind of financial security requires one to become an outlaw.
(Some things bear repeating .... )