Fixing things will require that the American people shed a lot of bad ideas and outright delusions about how government works. This will be difficult because the government prospers from these delusions.

If you took a survey, I'd bet a lot of Americans still have the idea that the money they paid into Social Security is sitting in a big box somewhere waiting for them to turn 65. In reality, it's essentially been a straight wealth redistribution program for years, paying people out of the tax money others are putting in. It differs from most of them in that the tax structure is less progressive than standard income tax, so you're supported by a wider range of income groups, not just mostly the wealthy.

Entitlements need to be ramped down, and private and semi-private alternatives found. Retirement money should belong to YOU. Not be a month-by-month handout from the government, to vanish if you die.

Ramping down entitlements for the elderly will, realistically, require a long period where the elderly are paid their Social Security and Medicare and the young, who will not get these benefits, have to support them for a while. The result will be politically uncomfortable, with the welfare aspect of these programs becoming obvious. The resulting slow reduction of the long-term liabilities will look great on the books, but it's pretty abstract.

Other options include some level of means-testing and raising eligibility ages. It's a tough problem, and I fear most of what we'll see is kicking the can further down the road. The least we can do is stop ADDING entitlements. Bush added one, and then Obama added an even bigger one.

Democratic politicians, of course, think the only thing we need to fix it all is to tax the living hell out of everything that moves and keep handing out infinite goodies. The numbers don't work, but Democrats don't do numbers.