I don’t think reducing compensation for future employees through reduced pensions shores up retirement for current employees or pensioners. For that you have to raise taxes a lot, I think. My suggestion was to prevent even worse problems in the future.
I think the current folks are hosed because raising taxes on the middle and working class along with rich people is unpopular so I don’t think elected officials will want to do that. So they will probably chug along and then go bankrupt, hosing pensioners.
You can’t cut the pension for the retired, or the soon to be retired. Instead you try buy outs and phase them out. New workers get 401ks. Old workers get pensions. Middle aged workers get a choice.
30 years later, the pension holders are dead, or your company is. Either way, it’s no longer a problem.
The feds went through this back in the 80s when they switched from CSRA to FERS+thrift (basically a 401k). I think that helped but didn’t completely solve the problem. But at least they are more solvent than Chicago.
Cutting pensions now would be like cutting someone’s salary and would likely lead to skilled people quitting.