There is no question that policy makers, corporate leaders, pension consultants, and journalists too have to get out into the real world to at least see the pain of retirement woes before they start to prescribe policies and solutions.

Only if enough ordinary Americans speak up and demand better from both their employers and their government is the system going to get fixed. But first of all, we have to understand how serious the problem is.

There is no question that policy makers, corporate leaders, pension consultants, and journalists too have to get out into the real world to at least see the pain of retirement woes before they start to prescribe policies and solutions.

If the experts are right in their calculations, then we face the prospect of millions of people retiring into poverty from the American middle class in the years ahead. That has all kinds of social and economic consequences. We need to anticipate those and start tackling the problem in a constructive way.

The children of baby boomers should take very seriously the consequences for them of the inadequate funding for them of the baby boomer generation. This is a huge economic problem for the nation, not just for individuals or individual families. Think about it for a minute - if retirees become 20% of our population and their purchasing power falls below what has been normal for retirees in the past, one important engine driving our economy will be diminished.

The issue of the pension gap has got to become visible and important to millions of people before Washington will respond seriously. Right now, everyone thinks it's his or her own problem and that individuals have to do better and save more. Of course, that is true. We all have to save more and take responsibility for our own retirement. But we have a huge social and economic problem on our hands.

Less money for retirees means less purchasing power means less economic growth overall. It's a big problem.