This is all pretty obvious and a long time coming. There are a lot of forces at play: aging of the population, greater returns to capital vs labor due to increa

This is all pretty obvious and a long time coming. There are a lot of forces at play: aging of the population, greater returns to capital vs labor due to increasing productivity. As an absurd conclusion, birthrates drop to ~1 per couple, 2/3rds of the population retired, and robots put most people out of work. Is it really so surprising that taxes would have to go up massively on the owners of the robots and other capital to provide all of the retirees a basic income? Hans Moravec, who ran the CMU robotics department, pointed out these trends in his 1988 book _Mind Children_ and what the end game would be. My fear about the unfunded liabilities argument is that it appears to be the new talking point of Trump and Fox News, and rather than see the writing on the wall with respect to the long term trends in the labor market and demographics, it'll just be more arguments about slashing federal social programs, pensions, and the liabilities themselves, which will make us all the less prepared when the real devil comes knocking.