So funny, I forgot to laugh.

Let's see, born in '68, I'll be turning 70 -- retirement age, right? -- in 1938 Doh! 2038, that is. And if we keep up this current rate of entitlement for the wealthy, aging Boomers too, that will be right about when the Social Security well runs dry...

So laugh it up, Collins & Brooks. You're pretty convinced you'll have your column-writing gig until 70 yourself, if we continue to push back that retirement age, right?

Call me a fortune-teller, but how this is all going to work out?

The generation sandwiched between the Boomers and their children -- the Millenials, I think they're called -- simply doesn't have the numbers to be heard. Pretty much, they'll be screwed. We'll be screwed. We simply haven't the numbers to advocate for a fairer system of distribution to those continuing to involuntarily contribute today.

Think about it: if you've been paying into Social Security since your earliest working days in your young teens (you can be under 16 even, with a work permit for summer jobs, and minimal weekday help), and the fund is due to expire just when you're permitted to pull off it, nevermind who wins -- who loses?

The last generation left holding the empty bag. Who weren't permitted to invest those resources themselves, and whose funds instead paid off all the promises that we now recognize -- years out -- are simply unsustainable.

And if I'm doing the numbers correctly, the last loser group standing, it seems, will be mine -- those born in the late 60s and 1970s.

So please, forgive me if I just can't fathom the humor in this. Can't you people see what's coming, or are you just too removed to honestly care?

Gail Collins: But about Social Security. It’s a great program. It’s simple — you hit the retirement age and they start sending you checks. Everybody knows how much to expect. It’s efficient, and wildly popular. It can also continue to pay for itself for at least another 20-odd years. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for the time when it won’t, but since there are other entitlements hemorrhaging money right now, it just doesn’t seem the biggest priority.

David Brooks: Before I get sucked into this tawdry subject, let me just mention I’m now out at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., where your book “When Everything Changed” is on the core curriculum reading list along with Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. This is a really impressive women’s college filled with an amazing number of fiendishly bright students going into the hard sciences. It’s just too bad that when they retire they’ll have to live in poverty because some people want to preserve an unsustainable program.

O.K., now, I’m engaged. I agree Social Security is a great program. It’s just that starting in 2015, it goes into more or less permanent deficit and if nothing is done then, by 2037, benefits will have to be cut 22 percent. I guess I figure it’s better to slow the rate of spending growth now rather than have the benefits fall off a cliff in the future.

Gail Collins: You may have heard that Alan Simpson, who was one of the chairs of the president’s deficit reduction commission, lashed out at politicians who gave the impression we could do anything about deficits without talking about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense. In fact, he said such politicians made him “want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat and give them the green weenie.”

My first question, of course, centers around defining a green weenie.

David Brooks: This is a slur against Martians, where the green weenies are oppressed by the green football players. I hear that anti-Martian feelings run deep in Wyoming.

ps. Dave Barry's brand of humor is actually ... funny. These conversations are pretty much just "ego on parade", a waste of space. Not serious, not funny, just filler.

No wonder folks my age have simply given up on finding anything for them in the mainstream news media. It's like ... they skipped over something in there, somebody got frozen out in the mandatorily imposed media hiring freezes, between the David Brooks' of the world and the Ezra Klein's brand of punditry coming up...

The Silent Generation, my parents' generation: Take Two.