The likelihood of escalating unified budget deficits is of especially great concern because they would drain an inexorably growing volume of real resources away from private capital formation over time and cast an ever-larger shadow over the growth of living standards. The broad contours of the challenges ahead are clear.
But considerable uncertainty remains about the precise dimensions of the problem and about the extent to which future resources will fall short of our current statutory obligations to the coming generations of retirees. We already know a good deal about the size of the adult population in, say, 2030. Almost all have already been born.