Gen X Can't Afford to Wait Until Boomers Are Out of Power

She suggests that entitlements are not a problem--it's the "inability of the political leadership to manage them responsibly." Actually--unlike the rest of what the government spends money on (fighting wars, regulating the environment, dispensing judgment)--there is very little "management" involved in Social Security and Medicare. They are largely a matter of writing checks. And no degree of "management" can produce or save the billions of dollars that we will need to keep these programs solvent.

Yes, of course, Gen-Xers are going to get screwed by this even more than Boomers as the bills come in. That's in fact the point of the piece: Boomers ought to clean up the mess and relieve subsequent generations of that burden. Chamberlain says that this is "like most Boomer ideas, totally unrealistic." I agree that it's almost totally unrealistic, especially if the potential beneficiaries dismiss it out of hand. But does anyone have a better idea? Furthermore, I don't know on what basis anyone can say that "most Boomer ideas" fall into the same category. Name three.