“I Think That I Have Accomplished More Good for the World in the Past 17 Years Than I Could Have Reasonably Expected to Have Accomplished in 50 Full Lifetimes. If Big Mistakes Are Made in Retirement Studies That Are Not Corrected for a Significant Length of Time, That Causes Not Only Economic Problems But Also Political Problems — People Lose Confidence in the Political System Under Which They Live When That System Cannot Find Some Means to Provide Access to Honest and Accurate Retirement Planning Numbers.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Wasted 17 years of your life is the correct assessment.

Okay, Yip.

I don’t think so.

I think that I have accomplished more good for the world in the past 17 years than I could have reasonably expected to have accomplished in 50 full lifetimes. Getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a very, very, very big deal. And if big mistakes are made in retirement studies that are not corrected for a significant length of time, that causes not only economic problems but also political problems — people lose confidence in the political system under which they live when that system cannot find some means to provide access to honest and accurate retirement planning numbers.

And I believe that it is by providing value to the world that one earns money for one’s self and one’s family — it is providing value that is the driver behind wealth accumulation. I think it is the fact that I have provided so much value that has made this 17-year journey so contentious. You Goon can’t stand to think of me being so successful. So you double down and triple down and quadruple down on your abusiveness. And a lot of the people who are in positions of authority and who should be helping to expose your criminal behavior and bring it to a complete stop are worried too that getting the numbers right in retirement studies is a big deal and that their reputation as experts will be jeopardized when it becomes common knowledge that the numbers that they have been providing for years are miles off the mark, according to the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research.

We have got ourselves into a big mess. But we are blessed to be living at a time when the 38 years of peer-reviewed research needed to make sense of this investing stuff is available to us and to have had thousands of fine and brave and intelligent people already express a desire that every site on the internet be opened to honest posting. And to live in a country that is just too good to permit the horrible stuff that we have seen continue much longer after we all see the human suffering that will result from a price crash of 50 percent or more that remains in place for some time. I think we are very close to a breakthrough that will go down in history as the biggest advance in the history of personal finance and I am humbled to have played a lead role in bringing it about.

Please let me know if there is ever anything that I can do to make your life go a little easier. I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

Hang in there, man.

Confident (Reasonably!) Rob