too late for traditional Eskimo solution?

D - USA is dealing with same demographics we are.
Slightly different response, though.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0328/Republicans-back-a-Republican-budget-why-that-s-news

Five budget realities no politician will talk about (not even Ron Paul)

Investors around the world appear to be content to loan huge amounts at very low interest rates to fund spending that is currently 56 percent higher than revenue. It seems reasonable to assume that this cannot continue forever, and spending will eventually have to adjust to reality.

In this area, Ron Paul is far bolder and more specific than any of his opponents. He proposes large cuts to defense and discretionary spending. But other spending such as Medicare, Social Security, and interest would continue to grow...

Last summer, the president reportedly proposed linking future Social Security benefits to a slower-growing index than the one currently in use, which would have resulted in major savings. The idea went nowhere. Romney now proposes the same thing, but only for wealthy recipients. But since the wealthy receive roughly the same benefits as the middle class from entitlement programs, changing their benefits will save very small amounts of money.

(D - whereas just such a partial de-index quietly took place in Canada recently. It will impact later generations more as the math compounds over time.)

Through Medicare, the federal government has promised to pay our medical bills when we retire. In return, we pay 1.45 percent of our wages, and employers pay another 1.45 percent. When economists add up expected tax revenue and subtract promised benefits over the next 75 years, discounting future amounts by an assumed interest rate, they find that the government is short by $37 trillion. Federal spending on medical care is the biggest contributor to the government’s budget problems, and many economists believe that even this figure understates the true problem.

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D - In Canada, pressure for 'austerity budgets', as well as a good portion of petty mean-spiritedness has led to pressure to dismantle public union 'gold-plated pensions'. First of all, the private sector CEOs and board directors are the 1s who receive truly golden handshakes - and they got us into this economic melt-down!
So let's call public union pensions only SILVER plated.
Now let's extend the reasoning - the need to share the pain. I do not see that reasoning getting applied to Boomer senior benefits.

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D - the only way we'd ever balance the long-neglected budget at this point...

Q: Do Eskimos really abandon their elderly?

A: ... yes, in the past some Eskimos did kill old people when circumstances were sufficiently desperate. Pressure from missionaries and national authorities, improving economic conditions, and no doubt evolving notions of acceptable behavior among native peoples eventually brought an end to the practice. The last reported case was in 1939, but the custom was a rarity long before that. In any case, the common perception of taking Granny out to the nearest ice floe and setting her adrift is wrong. I can't prove it never happened, but it wasn't the usual method.

Senilicide (the killing of old people) was never universal among Eskimos. It was common in some parts of their range but more so among the Inuit (Greenland to Northern Alaska) than the Yuit (western and southwestern Alaska). Even among the Inuit, some groups found the custom repugnant.

Where it was practiced, senilicide was rare except during famines. As long as there was enough food to go around, everyone got their share, including the relatively unproductive