For example my grandfather’s late 70s era riding mower was still perfectly functional in the late 1990s. Contrast this with my parents and their neighbors’ struggle to find a current equivalent that will hold up more than 2 or 3 years.

Also, after reading this post I will think twice before believing all the nonsense Dave Ramsey spouts about the stock market returning 12% a year on average (sometimes he claims you can fairly easily surpass this rate of return by investing in well-managed mutual funds). Judging by the return of the S&P 500 over from 1950 to the end of 2007 his estimate is only high by 4 or 5 percentage points.

The proposed solution is unrestricted investment options. Instead of having to pick either individual stocks/bonds or funds of stocks/bonds, a person can simply restructure their retirement account to allow for direct investment into real property, private mortgages, private businesses, private debt instruments and revenue contracts, and any other asset.

So my what I promote is that a person learn how to understand financial statements and financial instruments. This is a much less difficult task than learning how to understand the stock market. The stock market is this tiny realm inside a huge world of investment opportunities. My blog is about having access to that entire world.

I’d LOVE to know how to consistently pick the funds/managers that can beat the market and can be reactive to a big down market by selling out and/or hedging.

I imagine the inflation of reduced value could only be measured by seeing how much a product costs today that matches the quality of a certain product in the past… but then your are certainly getting subjective. Accuracy and consensus of such a measurement would be difficult.

Thanks for the valuable input!