The choice you’re speaking of is between “the children” in the abstract and seniors. The answer is they won’t want to make a choice. The problem is that the deficits of the 1980s and 2000s created an environment where big deficits are considered acceptable. I’m not as optimistic as you are about things, esp as the boomer bubble moves into seniorhood it will make demands that aren’t reasonable.

#7, I think you’re onto something… unfortunately, traditional per-capita GDP is based on total population, not adults. Plus IMO the Census Bureau won’t pick up an out-migration trend until the actual 2010 census, at which time it will be politicized and turned into “we can’t find people who are there” instead of recognized. BUT… It will be REAL interesting to watch the BLS workforce and total adult numbers in the coming months and couple of years, because it may act as a denier of that argument about the Census.

As far as I am concerned, the illegal alien issue has given us a unique opportunity to finally rid ourselves of the social programs by forcing the Dems to make a choice between seniors and those on the dole. If we can craft the message of one or the other, the American People will choose the senior over the others. You can’t look your aging mom and dad in the face and say sorry, fend for yourself when younger people have the physical and mental ability to do so.

Also, life expectancy at 65, last time I checked is 16 for men and 20 for women. So, assuming incremental health improvements, only about half will make it to 85, but the numbers still don’t work.

The social program vote buying is having to end much sooner, as we’re going from a $200 billion-plus surplus in SocSec, which is just being spent, to a zero surplus in 2017. Since they’re used to living on the higher surplus level, there’s no slack, and Congress will, on average, have to find $20 bil more every year — starting essentially RIGHT NOW — from somewhere else (first $20, then $40, then $60, etc.) or cut spending to keep things from getting totally out of hand.

Table 4 indicates the birth and death rates are fairly stable at around 2 to 1 ratio.

Table 7 population by age.
The under 55 groups look to be fairly similar in size distribution, so there is no hope of having the numbers on SS drop for any reason but in the next 10 years that rate of increase will stop to hold a steady state number. So between births, deaths and retirements, there is no explanation for the decline in the workforce numbers other than illegals going home.

As a side note-

If we roughly assume everyone that can will retire at 65 for the sake of argument the we should expect to see more new SS retirees add up something like this:

2007 to 2011 (60-64)- 13,362,000
2012 to 2016 (55-59)- 18,224,000
Total 31,586,000 will retire by 2017
assuming none of these people die or decide to keep working.
as opposed to 18,917,000 who are 65 to 74 and 13,047,000 who are 75 to 84
and 5,297,000 who are 85 and over
total 37,261,000 who are presumably on SS now.
By the time 2017 rolls around we can assume most of the 85 and over crowd will be dead but most of the 65 to 84 lives, that would mean a doubling of retirees drawing SS benefits, 63,550,000 approx and this why SS is in big trouble. The politicians embezzled the trust fund money and spent it on social programs instead of investing the money like any pension fund would do. That’s why 2017 brings an end to the social program vote buying.

I suppose it could be a lot more people than usual deciding to go back to school, or staying in school longer, which the seemingly bottomless federal loan/grant system seems to encourage. But the numbers change to support that would have to be demographically almost impossible.