Its a craftsmanship thing. Notice its her life savings, not just some random dollar amount however large or small.

I have an uncle who could swing a 1/4 mil loss and laugh. They intentionally chose this woman because she intentionally in gross ignorance decided to blow away her lifes work.

Its like an artist spending his entire life on an amazing sculpture, decades of toil and sweat, then blindly, idiotically, "eh, I donno, I'll just use this sledgehammer to trim the last little bit" and the whole life's work is gone, crumbled into ruin. Do we need sledgehammer control? More education? Can we blame the rich? How about more govt regulation? Nah, just fewer idiots with sledgehammers. Maybe the story will scare dumb people away from one dumb activity... probably into another dumb activity.

Which brings up the next issue, the other part is fools will always find a way to be fools. This quote says it all "He kept asking me what was going through my head when I bought the shares" That was her life's crowning achievement. Not being awarded a doctorate, not a Nobel prize, just an empty head and its all someone elses fault... That money was going to be lost one way or another, in real estate, casino, or other scams. Most scams have really sleazy operators, at least the stock market scam is somewhat less sleazy than some bookies and some used home salespeople and the like. Not much less sleazy, but a little.

I don't understand your argument. Who "knowingly screw[ed] over" this woman?

One of the historically "American" values is the lack of social and economic barriers to people who want to take risks: the ability for anyone to take a huge risk and earn a huge reward. You don't have to come from wealth or be a banker to take financial risks. If you want to risk your life-savings, no one is going to stop you. Preference is given to the individual freedom over safety.

At the end of the day your life, your choices, and their results are your responsibility. We don't want people/government to protect us from ourselves because that directly limits our personal freedom. The prevailing attitude is that you should be freedom to gamble your own life/possessions and ignore the nay-sayers. You have the right to take on whatever risks you feel you are big enough to handle.

So when someone does something risky, like invest their life-savings, we expect them to own the responsibility for their risk. In our culture risk and responsibility go hand in hand. We have little sympathy when someone gripes about a risky decision that turns badly. It was a risk. If you were not prepared to handle it turning sour you should not have taken the risk. If you did not do even the basic research to understand the nature of the risk we feel even less sorry for you.

We love the story of the underdog who risks it all and wins. We love the story of the underdog who has the courage to risk it all and accepts responsibility when he fails. We dislike the guy who takes a risk capriciously and whines when it fails and we hate the guy who arrogantly takes a risk without spending even a little time to understand it. Playing the stock market is widely known to be a risk. Playing the stock market with your life savings is such a foolish risk it is a stereotype.

What would be your solution to the problem you pose? Forced education of investors before they invest? Or just banning individual investors from the stock market? I don't really see any other way around the problem.

You do realize that before the widow in question was allowed to invest she had to click through a number of windows that informed her that "past performance is no indication of future performance" and "you're investment is not secured against loss", etc, etc, etc.

Lots of hindsight bias. There's always a grain of truth to it, but the overall American sentiment is that you and you alone are to blame for anything that happens to you (unless it happened to me, in which case it was bad luck). That's why Americans seem less understanding of poor people and tend to put rich people on a pedestal.