>a shrinking work force cannot foot the pension bill [...] >the political choices are unsavory — increase taxes or cut benefits Those are not solutions, thos

>a shrinking work force cannot foot the pension bill [...] >the political choices are unsavory — increase taxes or cut benefits Those are not solutions, those would both exacerbate the problems. A shrinking workforce, which has seen wages stagnating for decades while cost of living continues to increase, and which is increasingly being automated out resulting in high unemployment, cannot pay more taxes. That would result in even more working people needing benefits (or dropping out of the workforce because it's a net loss to work) and lower tax revenues. Cutting benefits would, of course, directly increase the problems that occur when there already aren't enough benefits to go around. And both of those 'solutions' would cause things to get increasingly worse as the population ages and automation continues. A possible solution would be increasing wages so that the workers, though fewer in number, could pay more taxes and support more retirees and benefits. Another would be decreasing the workweek, so that more people would have to be hired, resulting in lower unemployment and more people paying taxes instead of living on benefits. Both of those are also scalable, as the population ages and automation increases, wages can be increased and hours decreased to compensate. As a side benefit, workers with higher wages and more free time, in addition to paying more taxes, could buy more, stimulating the economy, resulting in even more tax revenues.