> If we're going to be adults, we're also going to recognize that many of us were not adults when these contracts were drawn up and signed. Many of us were never even born, and some of those who were of the right age opposed them to some degree or another.

Which curiously, is exactly the solution we have in place now: reduced benefits for new employees to compensate for outsized ones for retirees. Should they stand for this?

> It's not a responsible behavior to over promise pensions and bankrupt dozens of states either. Nor, in the pursuit of fulfilling those reckless promises, is it responsible to bankrupt future generations.

You're ignoring the substantial hand states have had in making this crisis. Several have continually neglected their annual contributions. Maybe they were backed into a corner when tax reciepts fell in 2008, maybe it was a political self-inflicted wound. When states like Kansas or Colorado cut taxes and take on substantial debt, it's pretty goddamn odious to point to budget shortfalls and say "Sorry employees, we can't make our pension obligation, we have interest payments to make!"

Moreover, when demanding pensions take a cut while paying lenders 100 cents on the dollar, you're concentrating investment losses onto those least able to afford it.

> If we're going to be adults, we're also going to recognize that many of us were not adults when these contracts were drawn up and signed.

So are you okay with a future generation repudiating their contracts and obligations with you when you reach retirement age? After all, all of us are someday going to part of a "previous generation" and none of are so perfect that our generation has made no mistakes.

Why do so many people behave as if aging is something that only happens to other people?

That’s why defined contributions in individual accounts make sense. The promise is made good on a paycheck-by-paycheck basis instead of decades in the future. And the amount contributed has to make financial sense now, which eliminates the risk of inability to pay.

There are solutions that provide the benefits of retirement without pitting young against old.

I'm all for this generation deciding, collectively, that the previous generation did not appropriately fund government and making a deal -- through estate transfer taxation -- to make government whole again. How that's structured is up to debate, but let's not spike today's economy and today's society when the debt problem can be reasonably solved over a longer period, causing less downstream effects. Everyone from the previous gen. is culpable in this, but these people are also our fathers & mothers, so let's not try to handle this situation in the most abrasive way possible.

Even when pension reform proposals do not change benefits for current employees and retirees, and only apply to new hires, unions will resist fiercely, such as this case in Kentucky.

> KEA opposes the pension reform, in which new hires will have to enter a hybrid cash balance plan, which differs from a traditional pension, and would limit new sick days that teachers can put toward their retirement.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/11/us/kentucky-teachers-pension-...