> I would be interested to see how excluding lower class affects this percentage, only middle class and above. I suspect it would skew the percentage much higher.

You say this like you think it somehow proves a point.

> I am a firm believer that the free and less regulated stock market and a smart and balanced portfolio is the best wealth creation tool Americans can tap into. The alternatives of savings accounts and CD's are laughably low yielding.

And I am a firm believer that most of these people do not have the resources or know-how to even begin doing this. Most are living paycheck to paycheck.

And I'm amused at the idea of loosening regulations on financial services industries ever has any effect other than a massive transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the wealthy.

> And I'm amused at the idea of loosening regulations on financial services industries ever has any effect other than a massive transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the wealthy.

Fair and that's the fundamental difference in our political ideology. I subscribe that the role of US government is not to transfer wealth or interfere with the free market. If I am in a room with another person and I have five dollars in my pocket and the other person has one dollar, am I suppose to give the other person two dollars to make everybody whole? The writer of this article and bill might think so.

> I subscribe that the role of US government is not to transfer wealth or interfere with the free market

That may not directly be its role, but if it isn't at -- least to some degree -- an outcome of the government's activity, then I think we're in trouble.

To a first approximation, wealth = power; and human nature being what it is, those who have wealth (and therefore power) will tend, in the absence of control/restraint from government, to use that wealth and power to gather more wealth and power for themselves, without regard for any impact (often negative) on those who have less.

Governments (in my opinion) have a responsibility to protect and help those who, for all kinds of reasons, do not have the wealth or power to adequately take care of themselves. That doesn't mean arbitrary handouts. But it does mean that a relatively larger share of centrally-managed resources should be directed towards helping those who need it most.

And so I'd expect one of the results of a well-run government to be a tendency to reverse some of the flow of wealth towards those who already have it.

Since wealth and power can be freely converted from one to the other, in order to maintain some semblance of a society where power is roughly equally distributed among the people, it is necessary to ensure that wealth is also roughly evenly shared among the people.

It takes very little sophistication or resources to set up automatic savings into an IRA, invested in index funds. We should be teaching this in High School, but we don't.

It does take a non-zero amount of money, though. Depending on your source, 49% [1], 76% [2], or 78% [3] [4] of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, implying that they have no savings available to be automated.

1: https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/jobs/survey-grea...

2: http://www.fox19.com/story/22676408/bankratecom-finds-76-of-...

3: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...

4: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-living-paycheck-to-pa...

I've actually helped people out on welfare. One family had a big screen TV, everyone (even the kids) had cellphones, and so on.

Some people are poor, but some are just dumb. I wish I could fix poor, but I can't fix stupid. And there is a lot of stupid around.

I know many people who make a few hundred thousand dollars (in Texas, not silicon valley or NYC), and they live paycheck to paycheck. That's stupid, not poor.

So when I see stats like that (thank you for the links), I always wonder what the real number is - how many are poor, and how many are just stupid.

I often wonder how many of those same paycheck-to-paycheck Americans are driving leased cars, cars under 5 years old, smoking, own the latest smartphone, and/or are regularly eating/drinking out.

I get that there are people living genuinely frugally and still struggling. It may just be observational bias, but I suspect there are a lot more people struggling who are not choosing to live frugally and where that choice would help them quite a bit.

It used to be that you could do all those things, get married, have children, and still live a decent life and retire on a pension. The fact that we have to expect anyone to be perfect if they want to have savings when dedicating fully 1/2 or more of their waking hours to making someone else money is absurd.

Was it the case? Both grandfathers worked blue collar jobs (coal mining and steel milling). Obviously, they didn’t have smartphones, but they also drove cars (1 per household, often bought used, never leased) for a decade plus, didn’t have cable/Netflix, ate basically every meal at home/brown bagged lunch, grew some of their own food, made their own coffee at home, and lived in 900-1200 square feet without AC (including raising 5 kids in a 2 BR house in one case) to make ends meet.

Obviously, I didn’t study economics when I was 5, but this seemed to be the norm in that era and community and would be viewed as abnormally (perhaps unacceptably) frugal now.

To be clear, they did get married, have children, live a decent life, and retire on pensions, but they and their neighbors lived a lot more frugally than seems to be normal/accepted today.

Completely agree. Instead of complaining that it's a rigged system, empower students to learn about the power of compound interest, buying stocks, index funds, dividends, revinvestment plans. Instead academia is pushing outrage and that government should be the solution.

Obviously, excluding the lower or working class would increase the percentage, but that would further damage your claim that, "Working class Americans have lots of skin in the game." Whether or not the stock market and balanced portfolios are good wealth creation tools (I happen to believe they are too), most Americans do not take advantage of them, and therefore have no skin in the game.