Only a few pages into Albert Brooks’s 2030:The Real Story of What Happens to America, I was struck by how
plausible his version of 2030 America felt to me.
Based on what 2011 America is like, it is very easy to see how America
could find herself in the middle of a generational civil war by 2030 – if not
earlier. Let us just hope that the rest
of Brook’s vision is not as likely a predictor of the country’s future.
By 2030, thanks to China’s financing of America’s lifestyle,
things are still looking good in America.
Cancer has been cured and people are living longer, and more
comfortably, than ever before. A score
of other new drugs have even made it possible for the elderly to look and feel
better than they did when they were in their forties and fifties. The cliché that “60 is the new 40” is, in
fact, now an understatement of the truth about aging in America.
And then it happens: Los Angeles is leveled by “the big
one,” an earthquake so damaging that the government cannot even begin to rebuild the devastated
infrastructure of one of its largest cities without a loan of trillions of
dollars from China. But this time the Chinese
refuse, correctly pointing out that there is no way America could ever pay back the money.
China is not the only creditor weary of supporting a
lifestyle in which it, for the most part, does not share. America’s young have reached their own
breaking point, and they see only a bleak future for themselves if they have to
finance the extended lifetimes of those who came before them. The “olds” sense the resentment directed
their way but, despite the increased security measures most of them take, they are
more and more often being targeted by assassins willing to die for the cause.
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| Albert Brooks |
This is Albert Brooks’s first novel and, while it does
display a little of the kind of humor the author is famous for, readers should recognize
coming in that this is not a comedy.
Brooks tells his story through the eyes of several main characters from
both sides of the equation: an American president faced with doing something
unthinkable if it will save the country; an 80-year-old survivor of the
earthquake with no place to go; a young woman burdened by the huge medical
bills left behind by her deceased father; a wealthy young man determined to
strike back at the elderly; and a Chinese billionaire holding the key to the
future of California – and America.
2030 is more
warning than farce. This is one road we
both could be headed down, America and Europe.
Let’s hope that Brooks’s vision does not become our reality.
Rated at: 4.0
a young woman burdened by the huge medical bills left behind by her deceased father
ReplyDeleteSee, that kind of thing bugs me. You can't inherit someone else's debt. Unless one of the premises of the book is that the law has been changed. And I can't imagine a Congress that doesn't have the guts to do any meaningful entitlement reform ever passing a law like that.
In 2030 America children have, in fact, become responsible for the medical bills of their parents. Medicare has largely failed, and powerful insurance companies are doing everything possible to shift a larger % of responsibility to the patient - while refusing to insure higher risk folks at all. Obama care has failed - or made the problem even worse than it otherwise would have been.
ReplyDeleteSam, that is an excellent point. Even today, the younger generation is getting a raw deal.
ReplyDelete