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I agree with the OP about special interests misleading people into thinking that a claim is valid because there are studies backing it up.

However, I think the OP is wrong about Feynman. Feynman was not one to blindly believe in other people's studies. In fact, as he learned from his dad as a youth who used to make wrong interpretations of birds, etc., people are fallible, and so are their assumptions. What he was saying is that you can't argue with validly collected data and valid mathmatical proof. You can obviously argue with their interpretation.

Unfortunately this graph primarily just shows that government handouts to citizens in the form of safety net programs, medicare, and medicaid have gone up in percentage, that defense has gone down in percentage, and that we don't spend enough (in my opinion) on public transportation- but it only looks at three years!

Instead, look at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's graphs, like this one of our debt and projected debt: http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.asp...

The Peterson foundation used to be an NPR donor. I don't know whether they still are.

Low load S&P 500 index fund like Vanguard's. Put it all in there if you can stand the risk, with about 3 months salary in the bank for emergencies. Don't buy a fancy house, car, vacation home, boat, timeshare, or whatever. Be frugal. Then retire early.