Taxes certainly seem high now, but they pale beside the amounts today's children will have to pay over their lifetimes unless changes are made soon. If government purchases of goods and services continue at current rates and if living generations are not asked to pay more of the government's bills today, future generations will have to pay 84 percent of their lifetime income in taxes, according to a new study.

Economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University and Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkley have developed a method of "generational accounting" which measures how today's governmental liabilities are transferred from today's generation of taxpayers to following generations.

Here are some of their findings:

• The lifetime tax liability of Americans -- that is, total lifetime taxes paid divided by total lifetime earnings -- has been rising steadily throughout this century.

• Today's workers pay about 34 percent of their lifetime earnings in taxes -- up from 25 percent for people born in 1900.

• Just since 1992, the fiscal burden on future generations has risen from 82 percent to 84 percent.

The chief culprit is entitlements. Over the past five years, the government has let spending on entitlements -- particularly Medicare and Medicaid -- grow more than three times faster than the economy. For every additional dollar we spend on Medicare today, $3.64 will be spent in 2010 -- until and unless spiraling cost inflation is tamed.

• Last fall's congressional budget would have lowered the future tax burden to a still mountainous 72 percent.

• If we could balance the budget and stabilize the growth of Medicare and Medicaid costs to match gains in labor productivity and the rise in the elderly population, then the lifetime tax burden would fall to 51 percent.

Source: Laurence J. Kotlikoff (Boston University and the Cato Institute), "Federal Debt: Rising Burden on Our Children," Investor's Business Daily, August 26, 1996.