[Mook]

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sadly, the average american is worse at managing his money than even the us government, so THEIR money is actually best off in the govt's hands.

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This is a genuinely laughable statement, and one which I hope on further reflection you'll retract. It's not even a matter of debate. We have decades of empirical evidence from dozens of societies where the bulk of economic decisions were made not by the people, but by those in the highest levels of government. And what, exactly, became of all of these socialist, centrally planned paradises?

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i do support the theoretical notion of allowing everyone to decide how to allocate their own capital(and the illegality of the government forcibly making these decisions for them)

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You could have fooled me.

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but this would NOT lead them OR the government to be better off in the end. it would simply transfer more wealth to the likes of buffett who have figured out how to capitalize on the severe money management flaws these "average people" have.

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Let's return to my (or rather Ric Edelman's) admittedly exaggerated example above. The point he, and I, was trying to make - one which continues to elude many of this world's otherwise bright minds - is simply this:

Capital formation is not a zero-sum game.

In the aggregate, my turning my savings over to you to invest in well-managed public companies benefits both me and them more than my keeping that savings under my mattress or in gold coins would. Similarly, whatever government can do to get the hell out of the way of people trying to build wealth not only benefits those people ... it benefits the government as well, because the additional taxable base they'll be entitled to their cut of will far, far outweigh the time value of the money they've lost out on in the meantime.

You're right that it wouldn't result in people OR the government being better off ... in fact it would result in people AND the government being better off. Much, much better off, in fact.

Mook