I have reached a stage in life where I don’t need to ask for much advise, and I am not interested in advice given gratuitously by people not qualified to give it.

We all need fewer advisors sticking their noses in where they don’t belong.

I agree, life has become so much more complicated and governments love changing the rules. It is a sad fact that schools do not teach basic money skills, I have a contract with the SA government to teach money skills to high school students, and I am amazed at the lack of knowledge with tax, superannuation, savings, using a credit card, debt etc. In some schools all the students aspire to is how much dole money can they get!
the a good financial planner will help everyone. Even the most confident can still benefit from speaking to a financial planner, 90% of what people do may be right for them, its the 10% that can get them in trouble financially.

A whole new industry of paper-shuffling parasites: they neither farm nor produce anything - physical or spiritual. Fewer and fewer people therefore have to share the burden of providing all that we need for our survival, health (both material and spiritual) and comfort.

Then even when we finally reach the end of our working day or the end of our working life, still we are not allowed to rest but instead are forced to spend our time studying and applying strategies on how to preserve the fruits of our hard labour.

Now the author is suggesting that we let those who failed us so bitterly, not only steal our time but also our minds!

Seriously Yuyutsu?

I would like an example how these "paper shufflers" have caused you so much pain.

Most people use a Doctor when sick, a lawyer in legal matters, an accountant for tax and a financial planner for money advice.

Or do you take advice from Dr Phil?

My parents used financial planners twice. The first time they lost everything they had put into his recommendations. The second time they received no return, & it took 4 years for then to get all their investment out.

I worked for a property trust, running a couple of their properties. They were the darling of financial planners, guaranteeing high returns to investors, & evidently paying high commissions to financial planners.

The marine division, & properties in the Whitsundays were doing OK, but evidently some others weren't. It came as a bit of a shock when a couple of directors were found guilty of using incoming investors money to pay the guaranteed returns, & were going to prison. A lot of retired folk lost money there too.

Pardon me if I stay very well clear of financial advisers, my experience tells me I will be a lot less poor if I do.

. ..an example how these "paper shufflers" have caused you so much pain.
kirby483,
Looks to me like Yuyutsu is talking about real daiiy life !

kirby
Can you see the difference between what Yuyutus is talking about, and what you're talking about? (Hint: it's really obvious.)

Keith Suter
An interesting concise opinion, and well written.

You make two assumptions which I think you can't defend.

The first is that:
"a new notion that economic growth required a mixture of government intervention and free market principles unlocked more wealth for more people than ever before."

The second is this:
"Therefore, the challenge for governments and the financial planning industry is to make sure that the new "priests of finance" are ethical. They do not want to run into the "abuse" problems encountered by many religious organizations (financial abuse is the most common form of elder abuse)."

I challenge you to prove these propositions, on terms that any argument by way of begging the question, personal argument, political opinion or ideology, self-contradicting, misrepresentation or non-sequitur, admits that the person making that argument, has lost the general question,

namely whether:
1. such government interverventions do in fact create net wealth for society as a whole, rather than engaging in a redistribution based on legal force, privilege and deception.

Basically the state and the pet favourite corporations they regulate, form a parasitic symbiosis, as against the non-consenting persons who are fleeced to pay for the state to enforce obedience against the population, in ways that benefit the corporations or trades, and expropriate others.

Thus the problem of abuse is not solved by making government the decision-maker. It is indeed capable of scaling up the criminality in legal corruption, for example, making huge profits for certain corporations based on the governments' regulations.

You assume
2. government has the ethical capacity to do what you want. But gumment has its own interests much of which can and do conflict with those of the society as a whole. It has all the same ethical liabilities and more.

Yes people need fiduciary and prudential counsel. However that, of itself, doesn't automatically over-rule the moral primacy of voluntary transactions. It does not automatically qualify as government intervention displacing consent with regulation and corporate favours.

That is indeed the economic policy definition of fascism. That's what we've got, and that's what you're defending.

And a person giving such counsel will necessarily be faced with the underlying pragmatic and spiritual questions for the client he advises. And these will go to wisdom.

The wise way is to help the client so that they satisfy the pragmatic problem, at the same time getting spiritual satisfaction.

The unwise way is for the counsel to lead the client down a path that does not satisfy only a formal financial or legal need, without satisfying the underlying human being as to his pragmatic and spiritual interests.

"Financial planning needs to be reframed as an honourable calling."

This problem is not presumptively solved by merely handing the decision-making to government.

As a matter of economic history, the policy of the fascists was precisely that symbiosis of big corporations and the state, knotting like toads in a dungeon.

It is enough to require that all transactions be consensual. The rest is criminal fascism by government.

Yuyustu says it all!
Alan B.