Ben Stein, who you may remember as the boring teacher in “Ferris Bueller” but who is really an all-around smart guy, gave a short interview to Money magazine (HERE) and expressed doubt that the economy is really in all that much trouble. But he did think there was a problem a lot worse out there, and I’m inclined to agree: the problem is my generation. We’re wankers.

Q. Are you totally sanguine about the outlook for the economy?

A. No. There’s a real economic crisis highballing down the track. And that’s the baby boom’s retirement. There are going to be 20 million or 30 million people coming up quite short of the money they’ll need to live on. I’m terribly worried about that.

Q. What’s the problem with boomers?

A. A shortage of intelligent behavior. We’re a lazy, undisciplined generation.

Yep, we are. And there are a LOT of us, which in itself is a problem. Consider, for example, that a graph of a developing country’s population by age usually looks like THIS, and that ours looks like THIS. That’s a whole bunch of geezers coming down the pike. And as the man says, it’s not just that there are so many of us, but that we’ve shown a propensity for acting stupid. Why is that?

Beats me. But since it’s probably time to lighten up, I might guess that it had to do with us playing with toys like the one below for too many hours of the day.