The only reason we need to have huge entitlement programs for senior citizens is because they didn't take responsibility for their own retirement.

We are in a new world requiring a generational shift.  Prior generations largely had employers who handled the retirement planning with pension programs.  This is no longer the case.  Most companies now offer 401k plans and many companies don't do a good job of getting their employees to enroll in the retirement plans.

What this means is that we have millions of people heading for retirement with little or no savings.  The baby boomers are doing a good job of bankrupting the entitlement programs and they will be followed by genrations of people who don't know how to invest for retirement.

This means that we need to do a major educational push to get people to take responsibility for their own retirement.  In some case, people need to know what to do with the money they are saving.  However, the biggest need is to get people to start saving money for retirement at an early age.  The last group of people are those who are living paycheck to paycheck.  These people will have a tough time saving for theri retirement even if they know they should be doing so.

If you have any ideas for how we can get more peopole to take responsibility for their own retirement, please share your ideas.