Social Security is a political hot potato. And this election year, politicians are promising to come up with solutions to financially shore up the system, although details are sparse.

Instead of waiting for leadership on high, tell us how you fix a system. Play the online Social Security Game. It was developed by number crunchers at the American Academy of Actuaries and updated annually.

The game gives you options and then calculates how much each option would go toward resolving Social Security’s problem. Understand, whatever fixes you come up with, will have a cost that will make some people upset.

For instance, Social Security’s solvency can be fully fixed by gradually raising the age to get full Social Security benefits to 70 by 2030. The problem, though, is that some workers have physically demanding jobs and need to stop at 62. Raise the age for full retirement benefits, and these workers will see their benefits shrink, too.

On the other hand, you could argue by 2030 there will be a lot fewer people doing physically demanding jobs because of technology and the drop in manufacturing.

Anyway, play the game and let us know how you would solve the problem.

Sam Davis of Towson read my article on the presidential candidates on Sunday’s paper about Social Security, and called for a revival of the game.

He wrote in an e-mail: “Your article did not mention one of the primary problems standing in the way of the fixing process, namely the Federal Legislature. Our Senators and Representatives do not want to tackle this issue, when in fact, absent any leadership from the Executive Branch, they have had years since this issue was first raised, and covered well in the Sunpaper of December 12, 2004. Imagine that, nearly 4 years of knowing the solutions to the problem with no action by our representatives! Please do your fellow citizens a favor and resurrect this great piece of reporting, update it, show how much time has cost us in the various remedy's outlined in that piece, and ring the clarion call and point the finger at who can act on this problem.”

Play on!