One of my favorite anecdotes involves a young comedian running into comedy legend Albert Brooks outside a grocery store. The young comedian stands in amazement and says, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I love your work." Brooks replies, "Do you? That's wonderful! Here, have all of my change!"
Albert Brooks' novel 2030: The Real Story of What Happens To America is not as funny as that. It never tries to be. What it does try to do is examine the debt crisis from the perspective of--you guessed it--the year 2030. Brooks establishes that not only has the debt crisis has not been solved by this point, it's actually gotten much worse. True to life, people have spent the intervening decades complaining about the debt, and making political hay out of complaining about the debt, but nothing's gotten done, aside from create a government where literally nothing can get done anymore. I mean, really nothing getting done, not even rebuilding Los Angeles after it gets leveled by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake. In 2030, people at first can't believe that the federal government can't do anything. Then they remember why that is.
Brooks gets a few heartstring tugs out of the devastation, usually centering on property loss and the resulting personal debt many face, particularly the older members of the population. Debt seems unavoidable and omnipresent at all levels, except for those lucky individuals who earned enough billions to no longer have to care, or inherited enough millions that it no longer impacts them, though they might pretend it does.
Brooks mentions that President Matthew Bernstein, the steward and likely victim of these impossible crises, was born in the 1980s. That makes him my age, to within half a decade, and gives him a perspective on the problems of debt and never-ending end-of-life care that are somewhere between the older generations' insistence on holding on to all they can, and younger generations' much more extreme bitterness over the fact. And then there are the political considerations, dragging Bernstein this way and that in the resources' tug of war, while he has several other things he'd rather attend to.
The word "boomer" is used twice in the book, once in the context of a generation soaking up resources as a matter of course while living seemingly forever, and that in a brief, emotion-driven dialogue piece. This is one of a few minor points where Brooks ignores a serious cause for the debt problem. Much of the potential insolvency of earned entitlements in the real world is due to the Boomers. Not in their refusal to die (no generation can claim that desire as their own), but in their size. Between the Greatest Generations' apparent disdain for contraceptives and new technologies keeping people alive longer, the Boomers attained--and have maintained--the prized status of demographic anomaly. They'll brag about all that was accomplished during the sixties, forgetting that it's a lot easier to make an impact through dropping out and protesting when you and your cohorts make up that much of the population. And their grip on power is not diminishing, as Brooks makes clear in 2030. He satisfyingly casts the AARP as a semi-major obstacle in most attempts to alleviate the crisis; their constituency being so vast by the year 2030 that its collective eyebrow raising is understandably terrifying for democratic leaders.
Of course, no resource is finite and that means there's a younger population getting screwed as "the olds" live longer and longer (among other things, cancer's been cured). Given that, one could see why the younger generation would be but resentful, except to the olds, who refuse to sympathize even at the expense of their own children and grandchildren, as Brooks explicitly writes at one point (and I'd be lying if I said this kind of childish refusal to understand the plight of those born into the situation didn't strike a chord). What starts with unconnected assaults on the olds soon grows into organized movements, requiring only leadership. It was impossible for me not to notice the similarities between 2030's Max Leonard and Nos Populus' James Reso. While Brooks' radical firebrand and my own do seem to share some DNA, they differ in a few key areas. James, of course, plays a much larger role in my book than Leonard does in 2030, and they have very different motivators, though a comparable devotion to their respective work. Leonard's radicalism is present nearly from the beginning, while James' bubbles up over time, after years of frustration. Finally, negotiations with their presidents is better planned-for by Leonard, but ultimately handled (marginally) better by James. Nevertheless, they share some very similar fates and resulting legacies.
It's a testament to Brooks' fair observation of the situation (he himself is a first wave Boomer) that he never anoints a hero. When the young refuse to engage or instead engage through terrorism, they lose any moral or practical grounds to improve their situation. Self-serving and overpowering though the olds are, they cannot be entirely blamed if the young are not organized and reasonable in their response, which the young of 2030 are not. In this way, 2030 reminded me of Christopher Buckley's excellent Boomsday in its depiction of an America so divided--not by ideology but by age--that the best hope of solving our problems are zany or terrifying strategies that sound effective but may never match our expectations.
The resulting inability for anyone to do anything about the debt means that when Los Angeles is destroyed, not even China is willing to help anymore, unless the U.S. is open to a somewhat radical new arrangement. And if you've ever heard a government official grouse about crippling debt (and you have), you can imagine the sorts of things that the government would be open to doing. Honestly, the deal that's made with the Chinese is intriguing to me at least on an aesthetic level, even if it does seem to cement the olds' untouchable status. And among Brooks' more potentially prescient moments (aside from a dozen or so consumer electronics he invents) is China's increasingly weary attitude toward its largest debtor giving rise to a previously unthinkable--though not necessarily offensive--outcome.
Brooks wisely does not attempt to solve the debt crisis. By the end of the book, with attention divided between L.A.'s rebuilding and the fallout from Max Leonard's mad scheme, the debt that had dominated the consciousnesses of everyone in the book has taken a backseat, while never truly being done away with. At least, the conditions that created it are still present, and a new president appears ready to double-down on some of them. The country cannot, will not shake itself free of its commitments and its debt. Maybe by 2050.
Grade: B+
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Afterword: On the off chance that Albert Brooks ever reads this review: Hi. I know that I'm posting this almost exactly one year after the publication of 2030. I'm sorry. In my defense, I've only had this blog for about six weeks. Also, can I have all of your change?
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