Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- Chapter 1. The United States Is Bankrupt -- Chapter 2. Catastrophic Success -- "No One Here Gets Out Alive"-Jim Morrison -- Moving the Curve -- The Other Mortality Curves -- Longevity Marches On -- When Life's Not Cheap -- Centenarians, Left, Right, and Center -- Your Money or Your Life -- Is There Death after Life? -- Modern Aging and the Arrival of the Lupies -- Achieving the Postmodern Dream: More Sex, Fewer Babies -- Children of Men -- When Aging Turns Economically Deadly -- Chapter 3. Living beyond Our Children's Means -- Doing Ponzi Proud -- Firing the Messenger -- Muzzling Richard Foster -- Lying about Fiscal Child Abuse Is a Bipartisan Activity -- What Goes Around, Comes Around -- Uncle Sam's Fiscal Gap -- The Zero-Sum Generational Game -- Voodoo Economics -- Oh, and By the Way -- Is 211 Trillion an Underestimate of Uncle Sam's Fiscal Gap? -- Things That Can't Go On Will End Too Late -- The Potential True Cost of Obamacare(s) -- Why the Fiscal Gap Is Our Only True Compass: The Labeling Problem -- Changing Policy or Changing Words? -- Minding the Wrong Deficit -- The True Deficit -- The General Relativity of Fiscal Language -- The Fiscal Gap Is the Only Label-Free Measure of Our Fiscal Policy -- Is the United States in the Worst Fiscal Shape? -- The Short and Long Terms Are Inseparable -- A Dollar's a Dollar -- Fiscal Gap Accounting Isn't Perfect Either -- Darkness at the End of the Tunnel -- Chapter 4. Economic Fallout -- What Makes This Chart So Scary -- Our Postwar Party -- But Hasn't the Personal Saving Rate Risen? -- Blame It on China -- China's "Currency Manipulation" -- Blame It on the Government -- Blame the Banks -- Blame the Boomers -- Taking from Young Savers and Giving to Old Spenders -- What about Intergenerational Altruism? -- Transferring to Oldsters.

Exhibit A: The Relative Consumption of the Elderly -- Chapter 5. Beatings without Bruises -- A Rare and Modern Wedding -- Putting Our Kids at Risk: Let's Count the Ways -- Fragile Ties: The Decline of Marriage -- Women Are the New Men -- The Two-Income Trap and Generation Debt -- Chapter 6. Does It Pay to Grow Up? -- The Decline in Home Ownership -- House Prices are Still Ridiculously High -- College, Sallie Mae, and the New "Company Store" -- How Education Debt Crowds Out Consumer Spending and Home Buying -- My Son the Plumber -- The Wolf at the Door: McJobs and Nojobs -- Chapter 7. The War on Our Children -- Fighting the Fogies for Jobs -- Locking Up the Young: A Major Growth Industry -- Rules for a Postconsumer Society -- Chapter 8. Unsafe at Any Speed -- The Purple Financial Plan Background -- The Fed to the "Rescue" -- The Purple Financial Plan: Limited-Purpose Banking -- A Safe Banking System -- Want to Gamble? Put Your Yacht on the Line! -- Mutual Funds -- Gas Stations Aren't Allowed to Gamble -- Why Should Banks? -- Banks = Mutual Funds -- Cash Mutual Funds -- The Federal Financial Authority-Keep It Simple, Stupid -- Joe Smith Gets a Mortgage -- LPB Auctions -- Is LPB Feasible? -- Cleaning Up Wall Street -- Making Bankers Unhappy -- Chapter 9. Getting to Yes -- The Purple Health Plan -- Staying at No -- We're Arguing Over What, Exactly? -- Agreeing to Agree: Our Shared Health Care Values -- Hallelujah! -- Meeting Our Shared Objectives at Least Cost -- But Obamacare(s) Includes a Mechanism to Limit Government Health Care Spending -- Fee for Service -- Health Care Age Discrimination -- Malpractice Reform -- Getting Employers Out of the Health Care Business -- Is the Purple Health Plan Socialized Medicine? -- Controlling Government Spending -- The Purple Health Panel -- Private Provision -- Commoditizing Health Care and Ending Insurance Abuse.

Why Private Vouchers? Just Have Uncle Sam Pay Insurers Directly -- Why Bother with Insurance Companies? -- Supplemental Policies -- Chapter 10. There Must Be Some Way Out of Here -- Complexity beyond Measure -- Marginal Tax Brackets-Neither Rhyme nor Reason -- Who Said the United States Is a Low-Tax Country? -- Taxing Our Saving -- The Purple Tax Plan -- Paying Sales Taxes Up Front -- Why the Plan Is Progressive -- Can the Rich Avoid the Sales Tax by Not Spending? -- Work, Saving, and Investment Incentives -- Treatment of Social Security Recipients -- Tax Compliance, Administration, and Avoidance -- Transition Rules -- Chapter 11. Time to Retire -- Don't Toss the Baby Out with the Bathwater -- The System Is Broke -- Thomas Jefferson on Generational Equity -- Cutting Everyone's Benefits to Balance Social Security's Budget: What's Required -- Social Security's Solvency Myth -- Thinking outside the Box -- Putting Labor Economists Out of Business -- The Purple Personal Security Plan -- Keeping Wall Street Out of the Picture -- Going Global -- Providing a Guarantee -- Converting to Annuities -- The Personal Security System in Postcard Form -- Chapter 12. Becoming Our Own Solution -- Trust Yourself, Not Short-Lived Institutions -- Fixing Our Cognitive Errors -- The Investment Nirvana Hiding Inside Investment Hell -- Why the Opportunity Isn't Visible -- The Actual Performance of Managed Funds -- Underperformance of Managed Funds Isn't a New Thing -- Access to Low-Cost Investing Is Spreading and Easing, and Costs Are Dropping -- The Birth of Lazy Portfolios -- Equal Investment Amounts Don't Mean Even-Handed Investing -- When Is an Index an Index? -- Is There a Better Way Than the Lazy Portfolios? -- Chapter 13. The Power of Ordinary Living -- Climbing the Mountain of Family Expenses -- Rearranging the Investment Sock Drawer.

Benefits from Big Decisions 1: The Five-fold Benefit of Working Longer -- Benefits from Big Decisions 2: Renting or Hitting the Open Road -- Yes, We Are Free to Move around the Country! -- Personal Decisions versus Investing -- The Investment Value of Taking an Extra Pill -- Going, Going, Gone -- Yes, There Is a Kind Part to the Economics of Aging -- Senior Spending: Transcending Consumption -- A Saving Grace: Death -- The Five Factors -- Chapter 14. The Generational Storm -- Much Ado About Next To Nothing -- Too Little, Too Late -- Balancing the Wrong Books -- Other People's Children -- Co-opting the Young -- American Spring -- Notes -- Index.