- Buckley, Christopher.
Boomsday.
New York: Twelve, 2007.
ISBN 0-446-57981-5.
-
Cassandra Devine is twenty-nine, an Army veteran who served in Bosnia,
a PR genius specialising in damage control for corporate malefactors,
a high-profile blogger in her spare time, and hopping mad. What's got
her Irish up (and she's Irish on both sides of the family) is the
imminent retirement of the baby boom
generation—boomsday—when seventy-seven million members of
the most self-indulgent and -absorbed generation in history will
depart the labour pool and begin to laze away their remaining decades
in their gated, golf-course retirement communities, sending the
extravagant bills to their children and grandchildren, each two of
whom can expect to support one retired boomer, adding up to an
increase in total taxes on the young between 30% and 50%.
One night, while furiously blogging, it came to her.
A modest
proposal which would, at once, render Social Security and Medicare
solvent without any tax increases, provide free medical care and
prescription drugs to the retired, permit the elderly to pass on their
estates to their heirs tax-free, and reduce the burden of care for the
elderly on the economy. There is a catch, of course, but the scheme
polls like pure electoral gold among the 18–30 “whatever
generation”.
Before long, Cassandra finds herself in the middle of a
presidential campaign where the incumbent's slogan is
“He's doing his best. Really.” and the
challenger's is “No Worse Than The Others”,
with her ruthless entrepreneur father, a Vatican diplomat,
a southern media preacher, Russian hookers, a nursing home
serial killer, the North Koreans, and what's left of the
legacy media sucked into the vortex. Buckley is a master
of the modern political farce, and this is a thoroughly
delightful read which makes you wonder just how the
under-thirties will react when the bills run
up by the boomers start to come due.
May 2007 