Today's Globe is filled with the dire predictions of the Parlimentary Budget Office about the future costs of the aging boomers.  The following is quoted from the Globe and Mail

Budgets, boomers and ticking time bombs
Joe Friesen
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010
 

HOW CAN WE FIX IT?

Elderly Benefits Demographer Roderic Beaujot suggests clawing back the old-age supplement completely when a person's income reaches the average annual wage. He also suggests cutting back on RRSP deductions, which mostly benefit the well-off.

Feasibility: No one wants to make seniors angry. They vote. As do those with RRSPs.

Health Care Prof. Beaujot suggests a mechanism to save for our own future health-care costs that wouldn't place the burden on younger generations. A focus on prevention rather than expensive cures could also prove effective.

Feasibility: Debating health care is so far a non-starter for Canadians. And there's no easy way to address the issue of exorbitant costs of late-life care.

Immigration Could mass immigration move our population pyramid? Yes, but it would have to be unusually massive. Just to keep the labour force growing at its current 1 per cent annual rate, Canada would have to treble immigration levels to 750,000 a year, Mr. Drummond said. With immigrants today making only 55 per cent of the pay of their Canadian-born counterparts after five years, such a level would be beyond Canada's ability to integrate, he said.

Feasibility: Could cause chaos.

Any other ideas?

LB

Det. Thorn: “I know, I know. When you were young, people were better.”
Sol: “Aw, nuts. People were always rotten. But the world 'was' beautiful.”
     Soylent Green, 1973