When I read The New York Times headline For Retirees, a Million-Dollar Illusion, I knew this article would have the usual amount of baloney in it.

But then stock market risk comes into play. Over the long term, stocks tend to outperform bonds, but typically fluctuate much more wildly. There’s a good chance that at some point, stock investments will produce major losses that many people simply can’t tolerate.

“We find that people tend to think of losses in their portfolios based on the peak value they’ve ever had,” Mr. Masters said. So Bernstein calculates the probability of what it calls a “peak-to-trough loss” of at least 20 percent in its sample portfolios.

For those with an 80/20 mix of stocks and bonds, it found a 60 percent probability of such a loss over the investors’ lifetime. And, of course, some market declines far exceed 20 percent.

“Large losses may not be something that people are willing to live with, even if they are associated with higher returns over the long term,” Mr. Masters said. “Which is why we’d recommend holding some stocks, but not as much as 80 percent, for most people.”

What is missing from a featured place in this article is the role of stock dividends in a portfolio.  If you have a reliable stream of dividends coming to you from quality stocks, then a peak to trough decline of 20% in market value of your stocks is something you can ignore.

At the current low interest rates, it would be foolish to be invested in any large proportion of bonds.  You know their value will decline and the stream of interest payments is insufficient already.

With Social Security and a tiny pension, I find that a nest egg of the size being discussed here is totally adequate.  With most of my nest egg in tax deferred accounts my annual income tax liability is a tiny fraction of what it was when I was working.  And I also do not have to save for retirement.

I can live quite well on substantially less income than I needed when I was working.

Maybe The New York Times needs to get some people who have retired successfully to be writing these articles instead of working “experts” who do not seem to understand what retired living is all about.

Thanks to RogerG for posting the NPR article Our Surveillance Society: What Orwell And Kafka Might Say on his Facebook page.

And, even in the tradition of prophetic literature that warns of the dangers of bureaucratic power run amok, there is an awareness that the protection of the state, while intrusive, is necessary.

This gives me an opportunity to comment on this latest brouhaha.

I just do not understand what the hoopla about PRISM is all about.  Suddenly the people have been awakened to the technology that is there for the big guys to use.  The fact that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, AT&T, Walmart, etc, have all this data and use it to their advantage every day is what we should be addressing.  They use it to concentrate market power in the hands of fewer and fewer organizations to the disadvantage of those that do not have the information.  Collection of this data is not something we can stop.  So we need to carefully consider how it ought to be regulated.

Do not let big media and big politics divert your attention from the real issue.  We have to wonder whose advantage is being served by bringing this issue to light in just this way at just this time.

This NPR article serves the public interest better by bringing up the all the real issues for calmer consideration.