Boomsday

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

Category: Novel Grade: A

Buckley is definitely the best political satirist writing today. In the past, however, he's tackled fairly safe topics. His most well known book that was made in to a movie a few years ago was Thank You for Smoking. In that book, Buckley made hilarious fun of the so-called death lobbyists - the folks who work the Washington power structure looking out for the best interests of the tobacco, alcohol and gun industries. In Boomsday, with equally funny results, he tackles a much touchier topic - the cost of government benefits for the Boomer generation. He illustrates the big fallacy of Social Security - that its an insurance program. I.e. that the money that a worker contributes during his life somehow pays for the benefits that worker will draw after retirement. The reality is a lot scarier and, in some ways, more sinister. It's today's workers that actually pay for the benefits of today's retirees. With the retirement of the Boomer generation, the largest in history, a rapidly increasing chunk of today's wages will have to be used to pay retirement and health care benefits.

What Buckley postulates in this book is effectively a potential tax payer rebellion. He's a satirist so he comes up with lots of new benefits that are being approved by the federal government mostly because of the power of the Boomer lobbyists (a theme?) - e.g. a new Social Security benefit to support the latest Boomer trend -- designer mausoleums! A blog written by the book's heroine (?) stirs up the young to, among other things, attack Florida golf courses as a form of protest.

What makes the book hysterical and more than a little uncomfortable, is the blogger's proposed solution to the problem - tax incentives for "voluntary transition" at age 70. I.e. government funded suicide. A taxpayer would get benefits like elimination of all estate taxes just by agreeing to "transit" to a better place. The blogger proposes the solution as merely a way to bring attention to the issues, never expecting or really wanting the solution to become law. What makes the book scary and, at the same time, funny, is that (a) of course, the financial analysis proves beyond a doubt that the scheme would make Social Security solvent forever and (b) not surprisingly, an opportunistic politician decides that he can ride the issue to the White House. Again, the numbers work -- if you can get all the "U30s" (the under 30 crowd) to get mad and vote, you can safely ignore everybody else.

Buckley then pulls out the whole bag of tricks for a Washington satirist -- a spin doctor who gets caught organizing a golf tournament in North Korea to encourage good will, an LBJ-like cynical President, a hypocritical tele-evangelist (whose downfall is the funniest part of the book) and even a Larry Ellison like ego-entrepreneur.

The book is an easy entertaining read - a good beach book, even if its a little late in the season. If you don't mind being a little ashamed of the fact that you think this stuff is funny, give it a shot.