Save and Invest

Now if the gov't gets involved and forces me to put my savings into some kind of plan for the future, where I can't touch my money without a gov't sanctioned reason, how am I better off?

Make it tax free? But if it's savings, what is a "qualifying event" that would allow me to withdraw my savings? With retirement there's an age qualification. What about savings?

The idea is "Well, mutual fund managers might take in hundreds of millions a year in fees, but they don't reliably actually do better than the market average anyhow, and those hundreds of millions come straight out of the investors' money. Instead, let the computer mathematically guarantee you get the average pre-fee, and then pay a much lesser fee to cover the transaction costs."

For more on this general topic, see anything written by Bogle.