Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old: How the Coming Social Security Crisis Threatens You, Your Family and Your Countr y

The conflict between the baby-boomer generation's expectations and the nation's fiscal realities (Medicare, Social Security funding, etc.) is treated with straightforward pragmatism by Peterson (Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy from Crushing Debt). Addressing the question of how America will ""prepare and pay for the growing dependency of our rapidly aging population,"" including boomers whose retirement is 15 years away, he counsels a return to personal savings and investment and increased productivity in the workplace. He acknowledges that reductions in benefits and entitlements will be required if thrift on a national scale is to be achieved. Whether one accepts Peterson's apodictic pronouncement that ""Social Security is a vast Ponzi scheme in which only the first people in are big winners,"" his proposals for a graying America to return to an earlier generation's collective restraint are worthy advisories to which attention should be paid. Peterson is director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Oct.)