Wall St brokerages pretend they are not in the gambling business by presenting their offerings as something every resposible adult should be pruchasing to secure their financial future, and then only making passing obligatory mention of the risks in way down the fine print. In fact the general public has bought into the whole notion that not giving your entire retirement savings over to Wall St to manage for you is irrepsonsible on your part, and letting money sit in the bank and do nothing is irresponsible.
Yes, I agree, Wall St. is predatory and misleading. To think an investment does not have some associated risk is ignorant. But there are different levels of risk. I'm still going to argue that there are fairly secure ways to be involved in "Wall Street" investments, as long as one is diversified, attentive, and cautious. Giving your entire retirement savings over to Wall Street is definitely too much of a gamble for most people, but giving over some fraction of it is usually a good idea. We participate in this economy every day. Why not invest in it, as long as we are prudent and cautious? It grows over the long term, and has done so for the last several decades, or even centuries.
Now, that does not mean that the economy will continue to grow, and that is where the risk is involved. But I choose to believe that, over the long term, on average, the world economy will continue to increase in value. I also believe that personally owning very small portions of it will increase my own net worth.
