Dear Boomers, I love you. Also I hate you.

The contract that binds generations together for the purpose of caring for one another in vulnerable stages of life has persisted in formal and informal means since, roughly, the beginning of time. The assumption that parents will take care of children, who will grow up and take care of parents, keeps society from fraying at the edges in a variety of ways.

A new provocative book, however, argues that the Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1945 and 1960) might put a unbearable strain on that human contract. Entitled The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took their Children’s Future—and Why They Should Give it Back, it looks like quite the read. (For starters, check out The Economist's review.)

Not only did the Boomers transform (for better or worse) everything they touched, they also lived and worked and put their kids through college and bought house(s) and cars and generally poured productivity and dollars into the American economy since the late 1960s. And now the darlings want to retire, en masse, and although they've got some savings - it's certainly not enough to last as long as they will likely live, nor at the scale most envision as "active retirement."

All of which will make for quite an interesting working life for my age cohort. I doubt that I can count on any Social Security for myself, but I might spend my working years paying for the broken wealth transfer system to Boomers. And we thought the 1960s were turbulent...