Came here looking for this. Agreed.

I’ll spot you the second one, for certain. The idea of retirement being pegged to the market indexes is a big mistake, as it inversely correlates the need for labor with the supply and generates that supply in a population least capable of supplying it. You don’t want a bunch of 65 year olds retiring during a bull market, when equity prices are high and demand for labor is stretched thin. You don’t want a bunch of 70+ year olds trying to re-enter the labor force during a recession.

To the first one… equity markets aren’t gambling. They are, fundamentally, lending markets. The purpose of the stock market is to create a public space for businesses to borrow cash at rates below that of the bank lending rates. That’s fine and good, actually. And I might even consider it a better alternative to traditional retail bank lending, as the modern financial system is a dead weight loss on both public and private business activities.

What I might add, in order to curb the impulse to speculatively invest, is to fix the price of equity at some price-to-earnings ratio range. The speculative investment in firms occurs at the margins - with firms like Palantir and Tesla enjoying prices well in excess of their revenues, while firms like Berkshire Hathaway are trading at surprisingly good rates. The ponzi scheme aspect is in the marketing of equities - often with miserable balance sheets - as safe and profitable.

Trading around index funds is comparatively safe over the long term and a good way to incentivize both savings and capital growth domestically. The trick is in enforcing strong sound regulations without those regulatory firms being captured by the businesses they seek to regulate. But arbitrarily decreeing that all businesses need to vet their lending through private banks doesn’t solve the problem of speculation. It just pushes the speculation onto the spreadsheets of retail banks.