Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. We know that older people accumulate more money and vote more regularly than other people. And there's a lot of them in political offices, but has the imbalance become a serious problem? My guest today has a new and provocative take on that. I'm joined today by Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale University, the co-host of the podcast Digging a Hole, and the author of a new book titled, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It." Professor Moyn, welcome to the program. At age 66, I'm approaching this conversation with a little bit of trepidation, but I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
Samuel Moyn: Well, thanks for having me, I'm just behind you at 54, so, we’re all aging.
GR: (laughter) 54 sounds young to me. So let me just start with a general pushback on the title. You know, there are good and entirely non-sinister reasons why people tend to accumulate wealth as they age and also why they vote more regularly than other people, particularly after they reach the age of 50, we see, you know, political scientists have seen a big shift up. And at least they do that until they get really, really old. So why do you say that they're hoarding power and wealth?
SM: Well, in a word, it's getting worse. You can make a claim, and it's understandable that it's natural or almost natural that as we age, we accumulate more. I don't think that would explain the voting behavior, but it's also well attested since the beginning of so-called democracy, you know, mass suffrage that, you know, younger people vote less readily. So, then the question, I think a reasonable one, is what's different? And the answer is it's worse across all fronts. And, I think that's true when it comes to politicians very glaringly and many Americans are accepting that fact more than ever. What I'm trying to add is to show that it's worse on the other fronts in electoral gerontocracy and I don't know what you want to call it, capitalist gerontocracy.
GR: Okay, I want to come back to that and explore that in depth with you. But let me just set the table by asking you, in your book and in the way that you think about it, who are the old?
SM: There's no bright line, you know. Are you old? Older than me, but not a lot. Am I old? My daughters say so. I think, you know, we're dealing with flexible lifespan. So, in my view, we have to treat old as a comparative or relative category. So, wherever we cut, you know, the distinction between the younger and the older my claims hold. And so I, you know, I also think that on the remedial side, that there's not going to be like an obvious place to draw limits on power, you know, like 69.5 is when Cambridge and Oxford faculty have to retire. But it was 65 before, and maybe someday it'll be 72. And so I don't think it's of great use to, like, draw a line in a continuum because the point is, it's a continuum.
GR: I see, okay, fair enough. So, tell me more about when you say things have been getting worse, you're referring to kind of the relative imbalance between wherever, you like you say, wherever you draw the line in terms of wealth and electoral power. So, tell me a little bit more about that.
SM: Absolutely. Well, I'll give the examples of the politicians and the, you know, income and wealth examples. You know, of course, it's true that in a way, we've had older men in power for all of human history, so what's new? I think the difference is we have more older people relative to younger ones because the extension of the lifespan doesn't mean there are old people for the first time, it's that almost everyone can count on getting old, and there are fewer young people at the same time. So, what we're seeing in the history of American politics, and it's been graphic at the level of Congress and the judiciary for a long time is many more folks, in their 70s and even 80s in power than ever.
GR: Okay.
SM: And then we also look at the lower limits. There used to be more young people in political office, in part because the old men died more readily. But now we're looking at a situation where I think there's one senator under 40 for five more minutes, but half the US population is under 40. Very few congressmen in their 30s and congresswomen, almost no judges. So, that's a representational imbalance, even if you filter out the extreme end. Now on the wealth front, you know, you point out that we should expect an age in common age wealth gap, at least up to a point, especially if people retire and spend down their, you know, their stash. But both of those numbers have grown substantially. In other words, the old rich are getting richer relative to the young, less rich, both on income and wealth. Take housing, a commodity, you know, the age group likeliest to own a home in our country is now the age 70 to 74 age group, second most likely 75 and above, the age of the average homeowner has gone up by two decades in the last few. So, we're dealing with change over time. It's not, gerontocracy is not static, it's getting far worse, even if you think it's quasi-natural.
GR: I understand the distinction you're making. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with Yale University Law and history professor Samuel Moyn, and we're discussing his new book titled, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It." So, you anticipated one of the things I wanted to probe you on, which was how you control for the fact that life expectancy has gone up during, you know, the last 100 years. And even though I guess it's ticking down now, but, and you get at that with this phrase used, the representational imbalance, you know, looking at looking at this. But I just want to drill down on it a little bit without getting too much in the weeds. So, you have found that that imbalance has gotten more pronounced. In other words, you know, if we go back to, say, 1950, there were more people representing whatever, however we wanted to slice the population up age wise.
SM: Oh, absolutely. So, that's just like, you know, one of the clearer parts, I mean, clearer, least deniable parts of the story that, I do think that we're getting older, there was a brief reversal in our average life expectancy in the pandemic era.
GR: Right.
SM: And we're behind other countries, in average life expectancy. But ours is on the way back up to about the mid-80s. And, you know, that doesn't mean that people don't die young still, although few do. And like, we're shocked when Lindsey Graham dies at 71 because that's kind of unexpected now. Yeah, but I think it's, you know, if you look at these federal office holders, we're dealing with next to no young people. And so, a lot of the debate, if we're going to start with politicians, is about the risks of cognitive decline or outright death, which are very real and consequential. Think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the Democrats who died in Congress and the last one to facilitate the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill. But I would say the much bigger issue is the lack of younger age cohorts in power. And that is, like that has been an extraordinary change just because even though we'd expect in an older country the average age of our political representatives to go higher, we wouldn't expect younger politicians to be almost locked out of those offices. Now there's promising change with, you know, Zoran Mamdani and so many others, primarying old Democrats and old Republicans, but it's not enough so far.
GR: Well, so, the bottom line question on that, if we look at elected officials, and I suppose also people in economic power, you know, running corporations and controlling lots of capital, does it matter? You know, there is a pretty robust debate in political science about whether demographic characteristics for elected officials really matter in what they do. So, have you found that it matters?
SM: I think it matters at the margins. I mean, I'm not at all claiming that age in any social setting is like the overriding criterion. And often age is really like a proxy for what political scientists call a cohort effects or historical effects, like, you had a formative experience that you carry with you the rest of your life and / or you experienced a certain historical moment, World War II or 9/11 and that affects you ever after. But those are in a sense themselves age related, and if you like, it means that older people become, yeah, like memories of an earlier moment. In a sense, it's even worse because even if we said, like, the aged are defending their interests, that might make sense because they actually are old. If we say that cohort in history effects are dominant, that's kind of worse because they're responding to past things that might no longer obtain and yet, like, it's all bad and it's all age related. I think that it's much worse that, and it's, I really pivot from politicians to the voters and those who hold wealth because in a sense, it wouldn't matter if there are young politicians on my theory, because politicians generally are doing the bidding of the powerful in their society, those who put them in office, those who funded their campaigns, those who call the shots. I do think the fact of older politicians matter. I think Trump and Biden are nostalgic politicians, both for approximately the same era often, the 1950s, in their different ways. On the other hand, if Trump doesn't make it till next June, we immediately have the youngest president in U.S. history. But I wouldn't claim that gerontocracy will have disappeared in that scenario. Rather, it's much in a sense worse because it's now masked again by the fact that younger politicians can serve old voters and money too.
GR: Well, so, let's take a different cut at this, and you've already intimated this a couple of times, but the patterns that we see for policy, public policy, you know, it seems pretty clear, I mean, you know, you refer to, people refer to Social Security and Medicare as the third rail in American politics, you don't touch them or else you die. Have you tracked out over time that the elderly are getting a bigger cut of the governmental pie?
SM: It's modestly bigger. You know, the that One Big Beautiful Bill I mentioned cut SNAP benefits for children in poverty, but didn't touch elder benefits. And that modestly increased the extreme mismatch, I mean, but for decades now, it's been on the order of 6 to 7 federal dollars spent on seniors for every 1 on children. So, I'm not claiming, I actually, I mean, if you want, going to get into entitlements, I think, like, focusing on entitlements misses the point of gerontocracy. I think we should be looking both at the level of policy preferences of the politicians and more important, those they serve at things like climate change, immigration, you know, pro-growth policies, the national debt. All of these things are, in a sense, much bigger and more consequential. You know, entitlements come in because we have to fund them. And I think a lot of people who, like me, have been concerned about intergenerational equity, have fastened on entitlements, in part because some people have always been against them, whereas I think we might have to increase them. It's just that we're going to have to access the disproportionate means that older people have accumulated. But that's true when it comes to climate change and all the other policy issues that get scanted in a gerontocratic polity.
GR: I want to come back and ask you about that after the break. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Samuel Moyn. He's a professor of law and history at Yale University and the author of a new book titled, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It." And we've been discussing the book. So, before the break, you were talking about how these other issues like global warming, environmental policy, the national debt may be the bigger things that might be at stake for the imbalances that you're tracking out. I just want to probe what you mean by that, to make sure I've got a good understanding of it. When I heard that at first, what popped into my head is something that, I have to confess now at my age, I have begun to say as a sort of a dark comedy joke, which is, you know, okay, you know, global warming ,that's going to be somebody else's problem. I say that to my students sometimes, you guys are going to have to solve that because we have completely blown it. You know, the national debt, I say you're welcome, you're welcome, here's what we’re giving you. So, is that what you're getting out there, or is it something else?
SM: Absolutely. That's it. I mean, you know, and there's kind of the conceptual side and the empirical side. It does stand to reason that age affects policy through having a kind of dynamic of postponement. If you're not going to see the big effects of some problem, you're going to die in time, you let it fester. And in fact, that's what we see, that when it comes to climate change, the older you get, the less you prioritize it. And that's very well documented, which doesn't mean there aren't exceptional green seniors. And so that's, you know, that's one reason I think we should be concerned both about the age of the politicians and the age of the voters. You know, the old French king who was part of the monarchy that would was overthrown, famously said after me, the deluge.
GR: Yeah.
SM: And I feel like the gerontocratic syndrome is seniors in power saying after us, the deluge. And it's highly selfish and obviously unfair to foist these big problems on people who didn't create them in the first place.
GR: Now this sort of goes back to the entitlement discussion, but I have heard some people blame AARP for some of this, and they do figure in your book.
SM: Yeah.
GR: What are your thoughts on that? I mean, they are constantly sending me things. (laughter)
SM: Yeah, yeah. Well, when I turned 50, I started getting the mailings, but I haven't joined.
GR: Ah. (laughter)
SM: No, it's not a boogeyman, but it, I take it as more like, symbolic. It's not harmless, it's done a lot of, I think, bad things. It was the main actor in the abolition of mandatory retirement a couple decades ago. I think it's so gargantuan now, it's the biggest, or one of the biggest voluntary organizations in history and certainly in our country and easily one of the wealthiest lobbies, political lobbies that's ever been created. But it's mainly rearguard. I mean, it's not even trying to expand senior benefits, it's basically a kind of age in a policy stasis. In fairness, it's got a lot of, you know, liberal members, a lot of, you know, conservative or neo-liberal members, and they don't agree about much fiscally. So, I think at a certain point, like, the AARP reflected a gerontocracy and became kind of a gerontocratic entity itself, meaning that it couldn't innovate and it couldn't reform itself, so it just became a kind of obstruction. Where I think it matters is that it can make the claim that it stands for the overwhelming voting power of older people, and in a sense, threaten anyone it doesn't like or who promises change with disaster. And if the question is whether it could really provide it, but it's sort of never comes to that because, as you mentioned, no one's going to cut Social Security. Now, it's going to run out in six years, and begin to become insolvent, not like, you know, over one day, but then there's going to be a big national debate when the so-called trust fund runs out. I assume Congress will save Social Security, but the question is, when is it going to be forced to confront these larger issues about gerontocracy, including the suffering of elderly poor? And my worry is that it's never happening, thanks to the AARP.
GR: Okay. Going to come back to the, you talked about the, you know, the voting power of the elderly. I talk to a lot of elected officials, you know, off the record, and they regularly cite this.
SM: Oh, yeah.
GR: You know, and we'll talk about something that has to do with younger people or, you know, things that younger voters want, and they'll just say flatly, these people don't vote, I'm not, that's not the way I'm going to get defeated.
SM: Totally.
GR: So, how does that factor into this broader argument that you're making?
SM: Well, you know, I think that it's completely rational for politicians to do the bidding of the old and their advocates because they just are powerful and they will keep you in office or, you know, kick you out. Younger people will not. And a question is, why is that? Why do we see the growing abstention from politics of the youth, and what should we do about it? And I guess I would say, that of course we can blame and shame younger people for not showing up, but I think we have to reflect on a few reasons for this. Some are boring, but they do prompt easy policy change. Like, you know, we punish the comparative mobility of the young through registration requirements. We, in a sense, help older people vote more readily, either because they're retired and have time, or they're powerful enough in their jobs to leave work to vote. Same might not be true of younger voters. And we might have mandatory voting, as in many countries or things like, you know, voting holidays for voting.
GR: Right.
SM: I think that the deepest part of the syndrome in this domain has to be that, you know, at a certain point when you look out and see all the politicians generations older than you and the policy outcomes of benefiting other people than your age cohort, you begin to become alienated and abstentionist. And so, I would think the theory would correctly predict that you have maybe some, yeah, like, disaffection with the whole idea of democracy when it's actually gerontocracy instead.
GR: Just to put a different point on that, I'm teaching a large introductory class right now, mostly freshmen. First day I asked them, I gave them all a card, I said, write down your earliest political memory. And almost all of them, it was the 2016 election.
SM: Yeah.
GR: It's, this era that you and I probably regard as a long aberration is all they've known.
SM: Oh, exactly, yeah.
GR: And that probably contributes to some of that alienation and disaffection.
SM: I think that's true. I mean, now, you can have, like, the Mamdani election shows that young people can actually help determine the outcome of election when they're enthusiastic and engaged. They're not like the boomers in the sense that, even were they more rebellious, they're not numerous enough to shake the system on their own. That's why my own strategies always involve more intergenerational coalition building. But absolutely, they are depressed and resigned, and it's easy to see why.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. And my guest is Yale professor Samuel Moyn, the author of, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It." Well, I feel guilty, we've only got about four minutes left, and now I want to ask you, okay, what do we do about all this? (laughter) You mentioned intergenerational coalition building, what are the big strategies that you put forward to try to fix this?
SM: You know, I feel the book fell short here in a way, just because it's very hard to imagine change once you've depicted so powerful a syndrome.
GR: Yeah.
SM: Getting out of it could seem hopeless. But what I do in response is just to give a million possible policy fixes, a kind of technocratic, wonkish spirit while also saying we do need to think in terms of intergenerational fairness brought about by an intergenerational coalition, in part because not all of the old are well off under gerontocracy, but also because the young aren't numerous enough without cross-generational alliances. So, I mean, the fixes run the gamut. They do involve things like age limits and youth cohorts in political representation. Those fixes I mentioned for the voting system or even things like proxy or weighted voting. On the biggest and deepest issue, wealth, I basically call for mandatory retirement in some sectors and reforming the tax system to reverse the perverse incentives that older people have to hoard. And to, you know, hasten, intergenerational wealth transmission.
GR: And would those include, for example, the bringing back of significant taxes on inheritance?
SM: I think that's fine. But, you know, the question there is, does that, you know, are there better ways to hasten, you know, inter vivos transfer, meaning like, the transmission of resources down the generational chain earlier. Because I think the long term rap against gerontocracy is that, you know, that younger generations will come into power and wealth just very late in their lives. And, you know, we are in the midst because the boomers do finally die of the greatest wealth transfer in human history. It's just a wealth transfer, let's say, among seniors, you know, the very old transmit it to the old. And so, a wealth tax wouldn't, I'm sorry, an inheritance tax, although very important, wouldn't necessarily deal with that as well as some other fixes.
GR: Tell me what those are real quick.
SM: Well, I mean, just as an example, I think we, right now most of the tax system is organized to let people keep their houses for as long as they like and preferably until death. And we should reverse those incentives and basically say, if you want to keep your larger house, you don't need, you can, but you have to pay higher taxes on it, not lower taxes on it as you age. And that's not expropriation or anything close to it, it's more money for the state which you could use for, you know, people across the lifespan, but it would encourage older people to begin thinking about downsizing and stopping their, you know, most flagrantly gerontocratic behavior, which is blocking new builds by going to town meetings and basically, you know, saying no. So that would be just an example. But, I basically, an income or wealth tax, a much higher than one we have would disproportionately affect older workers and older hoarders, if you will. And so indirectly, it would probably make the biggest difference.
GR: Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I've often wondered in my, when I'm in a fairer minded mood, you know, why I should get lower property taxes just because I turn a certain age.
SM: Exactly, exactly.
GR: Yeah. Well, we'll have to leave it there. I can see that there's going to be a tough political pushback on the things that you are proposing. But that was Samuel Moyn, and again, his new book is titled "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It." Professor Moyn, thanks so much for talking with me. And I have to say, I'm more convinced by you than I thought when I started speaking with you a half hour ago. (laughter)
SM: Well, that's, it's a privilege to chat with you. Thanks very much.
GR: Thank you. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
