sure. but first there’s the choice between spending and saving. to a first approximation, what we collectively save goes nowhere. buying a stock or an index doesn’t cause buying factories or anything like that. 1/

whether a CD or an index fund, you’re just deferring consumption. the index fund overpays and undermines what might once have been institutions of meaningful capital allocation. the CD does neither (as long as we don’t set risk-free rates too high). /fin