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Every player whether speculating or investing brings liquidity to the market, which is a good thing. To call it a "casino" seems a simplification of the various motives of the players in the market.

Some people don't invest in stocks for price appreciation, some like me do it for dividends. It's very simple to figure out what is safe or not. Treat the stock market as if someone in your town asked for money to finance a new hardware store with you getting profits as a share. I don't want to invest $100 to only get $0.50 every quarter, I want to get at least $2.00 every quarter. Make sure it's at the top of its industry with a long track record of giving dividends.

I think the idea that Wall Street is a homogeneous entity acting in unison is an oversimplification that leads to confusion. There are different entities on Wall Street. The huge bonuses that some employees of some companies make could be the result of a variety of reasons that could have nothing to do with your retirement funds.

Perhaps one way of explaining it is that your retirement funds are managed by a buy-side asset management company. They focus on managing your retirement portfolio and is subject to the ups and downs of the market. Hence there is always downside risk to investments especially in bear markets like our current one.

Perhaps another firm and its employees are sell-side institutional broker-dealers that make money by market-making, trading on behalf of buy-side firms, or even proprietary trading. These people make their money by volume, their sales force's skills at generating sales, mathematical analysis of markets, and have little to do with everyday investors like you and I because their client base is institutional, rather than individual. If a trader in this kind of firm makes a lot of money for the firm, they get a cut of it which could be huge, depending on how well they did. Like any industry, most people are just doing OK, and a few who are skilled rake it in. You might have the impression that everyone is receiving large bonuses, but only the skilled ones get the media attention. Everyone else is making a living.

Many parents choose wisely to opt for reading lips and enunciating words rather than sign. Sign confines you to the signing community. Reading lips allows you to interact with almost everyone. A close friend of mine is able to function more or less without knowing any sign language.

I'd say though that the "correction" part of a correctional facility is a secondary afterthought to the primary purpose of prison: revenge and isolation. I'm not saying this is justified, but this fulfill's society's need to have a cathartic release against anti-social individuals.