It actually does when talking about pre-existing obligations denominated in the currency. It doesn't when talking about most other things, but existing pension obligations are pre-existing dollar-denominated obligations.
Now, the feds monetizing all the underfunded state and local pensions would effectively devalue the dollar, so those pensioners (and everyone else on a fixed dollar-denominated income) would be getting far less than they expect for it, and taxing extra money out of the system to counteract the inflationary effect negates the whole idea of monetizing the obligation in the first place—you might as well just leave monetary policy alone and tax money out of the system to pay for the pensions.
> It actually does when talking about pre-existing obligations denominated in the currency.
It still doesn't. It means you can default while calling the default "inflation". Doing so wipes out all other currency holders in addition to you, but it doesn't mean you met your obligations.
(This is basically the same thing as you're saying, but let's be clear about what it means.)
That's another potential solution. My point was that there are potentially many solutions that do not involve breaking our promises to working people.
It is possible to actually pay workers what they've been promised and not cause an economic collapse. The issue is gathering the political will to do so.
So under this scheme inflation is perhaps not inevitable, but it is almost certain given the dysfunctional mess that Congress is.
As mentioned in other replies to this thread, there are many potential solutions for the so-called crisis that don't involve reneging on the promises we've made to workers.
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/4/18210370/warren-wealth-tax-poll
Second: Taxing the rich is extremely popular among the people, but not so much within Congress. This may be because the rich are Congress's constituents in a way that the rest of us theoretically are, but in practice aren't.
Third: For this to work, Congress needs to raise and lower taxes, not based on the popularity of taxes, but on the rate of inflation. Do you really trust Congress to make the right decisions at the right time? I don't. I trust them to make the popular decision, not the right one. ("Popular" perhaps more with the rich, but that's not the point. The point is, they're politicians, not economists. They're listening to what's popular, not to the economic data. They're going to mess this up. The Fed is politically independent for a reason.)
Having the ability to mint fiat money doesn't mean you can pay for whatever you want. Costs adjust to the amount of money there is.
In the limit case, printing a very large amount of money is the same thing as imposing a 100% wealth tax. It will get you all the purchasing power there is to be gotten... but not more than that. (It will also pretty sharply reduce the absolute amount of purchasing power that "all the purchasing power there is" represents.)