![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00EVIWV9U&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=marcombychale-20\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=marcombychale-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00EVIWV9U\")
If you think today\u2019s heated debates about Social Security entitlements presage conflict between the generations, Juan Carlos Cant\u00fa\u2019s Age Warfare<\/a><\/i><\/b> presents a future demographic nightmare in which the old use their collective power at the ballot box to keep younger generations in a state of low-wage, low-opportunity economic slavery.<\/p>\nCant\u00fa\u2019s novel is fiction, of course. But it is not hard to see where he gets his creative inspiration.\u00a0 The overall unemployment rate is only 7.3% today, but among teenagers it is 23%.\u00a0 And it is not for nothing that Social Security is called the \u201cthird rail\u201d of American politics.\u00a0 Any attempt to reform the system without guaranteeing that all those in or near retirement will be exempted is career suicide for any politician of either party.\u00a0 The result is that today\u2019s young and early-middle-aged pay for the comparatively lavish benefits of prior generations\u2026benefits they cannot hope to receive themselves.\u00a0 And this says nothing of the \u201cdebt slavery\u201d that Americans are bequeathing to their children in the form of trillion-dollar deficits and spiraling federal debt.<\/p>\n
Age Warfare<\/i> takes place in the 2050s, decades after an energy crisis caused the world economy to grind to a halt and forced the world\u2019s governments to implement population control measures that make China\u2019s modern-day One Child Policy seem mild by comparison; baby boys are sterilized at birth. It is a world in which power is so precious that the energy expended at the gym by running on a treadmill or pushing up a bench press bar is cycled back into the electrical grid via electrodes attached to the exerciser.\u00a0 Wealth is represented by energy, and dollars have been replaced by a new currency denominated in joules.<\/p>\n
Like other dystopian writers, Cant\u00fa has invented a new vocabulary to describe the world he envisions.\u00a0 In 1984,<\/i> George Orwell gave us Newspeak, a language created by the totalitarian state to limit the ability of citizens to express themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 In Age Warfare,<\/i> the young communicate by \u201cFonglish,\u201d or \u201cphonetic English.\u201d\u00a0 What is fonglish?\u00a0 2 get n idea, u shuld read ur kidz txts.<\/p>\n
Returning to the central theme of the book, the class struggle between age cohorts, Cant\u00fa gives names to the generations \u00a0of the next 40 years.\u00a0 Today, we have the Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials.\u00a0 In 2053, we have pre-collapsers, collapsers and limiters.<\/p>\n
Pre-collapsers, or those born before Cant\u00fa\u2019s energy crisis, roughly correspond to today\u2019s real-life Millennials.\u00a0 Born before the collapse, they\u2019re lived a mostly-privileged life.\u00a0 And because they are a much bigger generation than those that followed, they have the clout at the ballot box to ensure preferential labor regulations and retirement benefits.\u00a0 Collapsers, those born during and immediately after the crisis, area broody lot, having come of age at a time of bleakness and pessimism about the future.\u00a0 Limiters are a more idealistic generation, but they resent the reduced opportunities they have been given in a system that grossly favors the old over the young.<\/p>\n
Overall, Age Warfare is engaging and thought-provoking. I would recommend it for readers with an interest in demographics and in dystopian fiction.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on Sizemore Insights as Review: Age Warfare<\/a><\/p>\n