Where is it all going?

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Many economists worry that the U.S. federal budget deficit could approach a record $500 billion this year. Few, however, have grasped that the fiscal problems facing the United States could make an itty bitty $500 billion deficit look like pocket change.
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Try $44.2 trillion on for size.
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... What the number represents is the difference between all the government's future obligations -- mostly Medicare and Social Security payouts, which will explode when Baby Boomers start retiring in large numbers -- and its future revenue. ... If the problems aren't corrected, the study shows, the already huge projected shortfall could grow to $54 trillion by 2008 and keep getting larger every year thereafter.
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... Gokhale asserts that fixing the massive shortfall he projects -- assuming the government chooses not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits -- soon will force the government to pick from an array of even nastier poisons, including:
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* boosting individual and corporate taxes 69 percent
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* raising payroll taxes 95 percent
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* cutting non-Social Security and non-Medicare spending 56 percent
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* eliminating all other federal government spending
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* or some combination of each of these four measures ...
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The Financial Times reported Thursday that the Gokhale-Smetters study was commissioned by Paul O'Neill when he was treasury secretary ... the Social Security Administration has started using the Gokhale-Smetters accounting method to project future deficits The $44 trillion hole?, Recent study says Social Security, Medicare shortfalls could be far bigger than previously thought, May 29, 2003: 3:46 PM EDT, By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer 805_clip6

That $42 trillion is old news. So is this.

More here.