Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek offers some ideas this week to help address the ?one problem that overshadows all else?: Washington?s ?truly frightening? debt burdens.

It shouldn?t surprise us that one option he favors is a new tax. Though he suggests that instituting a value-added tax could be coupled with lower income-tax rates ?to compensate somewhat,? taxpayers undoubtedly would pay more. That?s the point: Increased revenue from taxpayers.

Joe Coletti has explained to us in the past ? when discussing the N.C. Senate?s spring 2009 tax ?reform? plans ? why any plan to improve the tax system should not be geared toward increasing revenue.

Though Zakaria?s tax proposals deserve a good place on the shelf of discarded ideas, at least he buys into the necessity of reforming entitlements.

The most important fix is to tie benefits to rises in inflation, not wages, a seemingly technical matter, but one that could save the government hundreds of billions of dollars. Then raise the retirement age by a couple of years, and link it to life expectancy, which increases by three months every year. This is not impossible. Germany just raised its retirement age to 67. In fact, many European countries have fixed their pension systems so that they will be solvent for decades, even longer.

Those who heard George Will?s presentation at the John Locke Foundation?s 2008 anniversary dinner will remember a similar recommendation about raising the retirement age. They might also remember this warning:

Among the issues candidates are ignoring is the growing burden of federal entitlement programs, Will said. The federal government spends an additional $193 million on entitlements every hour, and Jan. 1 marked the beginning of a ?demographic deluge? tied to the pending retirements of 77 million baby boomers, he said.

?Most Americans who collect Social Security begin collecting it at age 62,? Will said. ?That is, in my judgment, not just preposterous but bordering on obscene. The largest entitlement in the mind of the American people today is an entitlement to be publicly subsidized by a regressive transfer of wealth from the working young in their family-forming, house-buying period to the retired elderly, the most affluent cohort in the country.?

?It?s astonishing,? he said. ?What people are not talking about in this presidential race which they must talk about sooner or later is the demographic destiny of the welfare state in the context of an aging population.?