I appreciate the civil discourse you and I are having! >You can't look at this as a local problem. It's a problem that's going to affect every country in the w

I appreciate the civil discourse you and I are having! >You can't look at this as a local problem. It's a problem that's going to affect every country in the world, because eventually all of them are going to have a stagnating population. Yes, it is a global issue. But, unfortunately, I am less confident we can solve for issues that affect the global population. Maybe we will learn from our climate change issue that preventative measures must be taken. Reactionary responses will be too late. >Automation is actually the one thing that could solve this issue. If we can make things cheap enough then maybe government programs can cover it, but that's a big if in the long term. It's more likely that some generation is going to get the short end of the stick - they'll have to pay for the benefits of the older generation, but they themselves won't get those benefits. And while I agree some level of automation will help. What you describe in your last sentence is already happening in the US, and we are making no attempt to accommodate our tax structure to these changes. The bleed >Initially, payroll taxes for healthcare and pensions are there to cover the individual that's paying it. That is the fair share. Interesting, I was not aware. But wouldn't this be true for other things the government provides? Such as public roads and the like? When we have Amazon paying $0 in federal tax, but shipping products using public roads...we subsidize them. Or when the richest folk do the same by storing trillions of dollars in tax havens...we subsidize them. So maybe we should have this conversation again once we convince folks to pay their fair share. :) Cheers!