LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
ians whose quests for the American Dream have started and
ended in vastly different places.
Outside Orlando, two hours by
car from Eliseo Orasco’s yellow house with white trim, lies
the world’s largest retirement
community, the Villages, with
88,000 residents. Here, in stark
contrast to the blight of foreclosure, bulldozers clear land for yet
more housing construction and
residents navigate the pristine
grounds in golf carts. The telling
statistics are not boom-and-bust
home sale prices but amenities:
95 restaurants, 63 swimming
pools, 513 holes of golf.
It’s a story about much more
than some people doing better than
others. In the course of his interviews, Ben examines the economic
gulf that increasingly separates the
old from the young, putting flesh
and blood on what one economist
calls a coming “demographic train
wreck.” As the number of elderly
Floridians increases, with those
over 85 emerging as the fastestgrowing group, state leaders are
slashing billions from the public
education budget, and opportunities for young people — like Dennis
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
Hebert, an unemployed 26-year-old
who for a time had to move his wife
and young son into their car — are
dwindling. More than a third of
Florida’s recent college graduates
are unable to find work in the state
— a dilemma that’s affecting young
people in all parts of
the country. As William Collon, a 75-yearIt is
old Villages resident,
now more
puts it, “The retired
urgent than
folks around here have
ever to
done just fine. It’s the
continue
young people who got
sounding
in trouble.”
When I wrote
the alarm
Third World America
the way
in 2010, my goal was
Ben Hallman
to help “sound the
has so
alarm” so we’d able
powerfully
to course-correct
done.”
while there was still
time. Two years later,
it is now more urgent than ever to
continue sounding the alarm the
way Ben Hallman has
so powerfully done.
ARIANNA