You are right. It is a lot of your retirement funding, though. There is a lot of debt involved here too. Crash the companies, enough stakeholders get burnt, money gets sucked out of everything else.

How many Americans even have money for retirement?

It reminds me of 1990s Russia were the smart people didn't get caught up in capitalism casino and just kept tending their vegetable garden like they had done for centuries.

To quote Bob Dylan

"If you ain't got nothing you got nothing to lose"

About half of Americans have zero retirement savings

Virtually no one under the age of 18 has any. So that's a lot of Americans. Should they have any?

this while factually correct probably requires age distribution. I did not have a penny saved for retirement until I hit mid-to-late-30's. I am 50 now and can retire comfortably today

The median for ages 45-54 is 115,000, for 55-64 185,000

> Russia were the smart people didn't get caught up in capitalism casino and just kept tending their vegetable garden like they had done for centuries.

Ha. Most people didn't have any money to get into the crony/gangster capitalism. Just peasants with their vegetable gardens. How many American have vegetable gardens?

It is insofar as when it does great we get nothing, and when it doesn't we get fired. And when it does bad enough, tons of retirees lose a shit ton of money for literally no reason.