Wellness at Work Podcast

Wellness at Work Podcast - Dr. Samuel Moyn, Yale Professor and Author, Gerontocracy in America
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In this episode of the Wellness at Work Podcast, brought to you by The Learning and Development Projects at Silberman School of Social Work–Hunter College, host Geoff Rogers and his guest, Dr. Samuel Moyn discuss the issue of gerontocracy in America. Samuel Aaron Moyn is an American historian and legal scholar serving as Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, where he also heads Grace Hopper College. Known for revisionist interpretations of human rights history, Moyn has authored works such as The Last Utopia, Not Enough, Humane, and Liberalism Against Itself. His scholarship explores modern European intellectual history, critiques Cold War liberalism, and examines U.S. foreign policy. His most recent 2026 book Gerontocracy in America addresses intergenerational power imbalances. Moyn has taught at Columbia and Harvard, received awards like Columbia’s Mark Van Doren Prize, and is a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
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Opening and closing themes: Música Clásica - Rondo Alla Turca. Piano Sonata no. 11, K. 331 - III. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
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Creators and Guests

Host
Geoff Rogers
Host of Wellness At Work Podcast
Producer
Jesan Sorrells
Producer of Wellness At Work Podcast

What is Wellness at Work Podcast ?

From The Learning and Development Projects at Silberman School of Social Work - Hunter College

Geoff Rogers: Good afternoon. Today we're going to be talking to Samuel Moyn. Samuel is a…

Geoff Rogers: American historian and legal scholar serving as Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, where he also heads Grace Hopper College.

Geoff Rogers: Known for revisionist interpretations of human rights history.

Geoff Rogers: Samuel has authored works such as The Last Utopia, Not Enough.

Geoff Rogers: humane and liberalism Against Itself. His scholarship explores modern

Geoff Rogers: European intellectual history, critiques on Cold War liberalism.

Geoff Rogers: and examines U.S. foreign policy. His most recent book, which we'll be talking about today, which

Geoff Rogers: is intriguing, and I really enjoyed reading,

Geoff Rogers: gerontocracy in America. It addresses intergenerational power imbalances.

Geoff Rogers: And Sam has taught at Columbia and Harvard, received awards like Columbia's Mark Van Doren Prize, and is a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Geoff Rogers: Sam, welcome! Thank you so much for joining us today.

Samuel Moyn: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Geoff Rogers: So, for those folks who haven't got a liberal arts education like I have, what… how would we define, gerontocracy?

Samuel Moyn: Well, it's a word that's going viral now, I think, because of various events involving our political leaders, but it just means government of by and for the old, and what I've tried to do is look a little bit at its history, but

Samuel Moyn: Focus on how it's… back in America today, and is maybe taking a new form.

Geoff Rogers: So, talk a little bit about how it's unfolding today. You know, I've seen some of your other podcasts, and…

Geoff Rogers: I think for our folks to be able to understand

Geoff Rogers: What does it look like in the United States?

Samuel Moyn: Yeah, that's the heart of the matter, really. I mean, in deep history, probably most human beings have been ruled by old men.

Samuel Moyn: And that was kind of on principle. It was out in the open that the rulers of societies were very often entitled to rule

Samuel Moyn: on grounds of their age, as well as their gender.

Samuel Moyn: And we got rid of that,

Samuel Moyn: with some remnants, but we've reinvented it, in America in 2026.

Samuel Moyn: And it's… it's not just that we actually do have older folks back in power. The presidency is aging. We've had the oldest presidents in American history the last few years.

Samuel Moyn: We have an aging Congress, and that's been trending up for decades. We have a Supreme Court and federal judiciary that's old.

Samuel Moyn: But then, what we've done that's new, I think, is keep people alive.

Samuel Moyn: Which enables them not just to serve in office indefinitely, but to vote indefinitely, and maybe control the political system through voting, at disproportionate rates, and then they have the most money. Right. So, it's like a triple threat, if you will.

Geoff Rogers: So, it's interesting… yeah, I…

Geoff Rogers: I'm… I guess I'm really curious as to why you think we are holding on to folks who…

Geoff Rogers: God, and this is gonna sound a little ageist, who may have passed their due date. And, I'm…

Geoff Rogers: And more, more… More to the point, maybe…

Geoff Rogers: sort of pass their relevance, and what do you think that… why do you think that is?

Samuel Moyn: Well, you know, I think that we didn't have the possibility of doing so

Samuel Moyn: Until we were very successful in keeping everyone alive for much longer. There were always old folks and always super-agers, but, you know, politicians in particular were term-limited by mortality.

Samuel Moyn: And so the question is really why one place, which is Western Europe, has…

Samuel Moyn: Diverge, because it turns out that more than half of humanity right now has a political leader over 70.

Samuel Moyn: And I think the reason is that Americans, though we have a democracy, don't just have old voters controlling the elections, but the politicians benefit from usually very little threat to their tenure in office. They have… their races aren't contested.

Samuel Moyn: Most of the time, or…

Samuel Moyn: They have incumbency advantages, due to private finance, financing of campaign and the media landscape and so forth, so…

Samuel Moyn: Basically, we want older folks to leave their jobs if they're politicians, but we can't get it because of the way we've organized the political system.

Samuel Moyn: Now, in a broader sense, I think we live in a culture in which people don't

Samuel Moyn: Except that they're old, they're just less young, and that means that they're very likely going to deny their…

Samuel Moyn: decline for as long as they can, which is natural. And then, you know, we let them in very many instances.

Geoff Rogers: So… How do we distinguish the value of aging and accumulated experience from the concentration Of power, and also…

Geoff Rogers: the…

Geoff Rogers: I think what comes along with aging is this… has to be the admission of a certain level of… differing levels of decline.

Samuel Moyn: Yeah.

Samuel Moyn: Well… in, in, in, in, in…

Samuel Moyn: contrast to a lot of folks, I actually am not as hostile to older people serving as politicians, because it's just true we're an aging society, and older people deserve some representatives

Samuel Moyn: first of all, who look and like them and share their generational experience. The main problem when it comes to politician isn't so much, in my view, cognitive decline or outright death that our politicians, you know, famously

Samuel Moyn: are facing, but that there are so few middle-aged and young people, in… in higher office. And so, that's… that's a big problem.

Geoff Rogers: And…

Samuel Moyn: And I think we have to maybe…

Samuel Moyn: Do some moral philosophy to figure out,

Samuel Moyn: yeah, what would be a fairer arrangement when it comes to, like, the politicians? On the other side of the line, when it comes to voters and wealth, which are my main focus in the book.

Samuel Moyn: And that would include things like jobs and housing, not just what's in your bank account. I think we just don't know the facts, and once we do, it…

Samuel Moyn: it's almost more scandalous than the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps and Mitch McConnells and Ruth Bader Ginsburgs. So I think, you know, on your question, I think we need to give older people their due.

Samuel Moyn: We need to protect them from ageism, but we also need to start thinking that they could have too much power in various ways, and we would want to make some adjustments, not to hurt them. Although, you know, it's famous, you know, as you've heard before, to say that

Samuel Moyn: To someone who is an oppressor, equality feels like injustice.

Samuel Moyn: And so, there's gonna be accusations of ageism. But I don't think we can be ageist. We have to recognize the scourge of ageism, even as we recognize that it also hurts young people and those who are even middle-aged, and we need to rebalance a little bit.

Jesan Sorrells: The only…

Jesan Sorrells: Jeff, before you… before you… you ask your next question, as you're thinking, I'm gonna… I'm gonna ask a question here. By the way, this is… Sure. This is, for those who are listening, this is the producer of the Wellness at Work podcast, Hazan Sorrells. Good to see you all, good to hear… good to hear you all, and see you all yet again on the show today.

Jesan Sorrells: I'm fascinated by this topic, Dr. Moyn. As a person who is on the younger end of Generation X, okay,

Jesan Sorrells: And I'm really fascinated by it because I think my generation in particular is going to get skipped over for the presidency, and is going to get skipped over for higher office. Matter of fact, you could watch it happening in real time.

Jesan Sorrells: Totally. And I think, generationally.

Jesan Sorrells: the power is shifting. You talk about electoral power, you talk about wealth, you talk about, voter selection.

Jesan Sorrells: I think, in general, it's shifting from the boomers directly to the Millennials and into the Gen Zers. So, speaking as someone who is part of a skipped-over generation, like if we're looking at the next presidential election.

Jesan Sorrells: the top candidates in both the Republican and the Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, on the Democratic side, AOC, Zorhan Mamdami, and then on the Republican side, Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, and whoever else will show up from the Republican Party.

Jesan Sorrells: with the exception of Gavin Newsom and Marco Rubio.

Jesan Sorrells: and maybe Kamala Harris, she kind of walks the line a little bit between being a woman and being a Gen Xer, there's no Gen Xers. We're gonna get skipped. And so I hear your arguments, and I wonder how much of this is really an appeal to the millennial sense of… not entitlement, but the millennial sense of…

Jesan Sorrells: and this is gonna sound terrible, and I realize what podcasts we're on, but can't the boomers just die already and give it to us?

Geoff Rogers: Okay, wow.

Jesan Sorrells: That's terrible! That's terrible! But I read these things online, I see… I see what people are saying, I see what people are commenting and posting, I know you do as well. And so it strikes me as…

Jesan Sorrells: How do we… what strikes me is how do we balance that… that… that sense of being skipped over, or that sense of power being… being taken away, with the sense of, to your point, in the older generation, and in older folks, with that sense of, well, there's no one around.

Jesan Sorrells: to really give it to, because they don't have the responsibility. How do we balance those two things?

Samuel Moyn: It's a brilliant question, and you know, as a Gen Xer myself.

Samuel Moyn: I've often felt that, you know, our generation got shortchanged. And for a long time, actually, we had one

Samuel Moyn: guy who…

Samuel Moyn: was a serious contender for the presidency, and he wasn't even that serious, Beto O'Rourke. And as you say, now it looks like, we're gonna be skipped over. And so.

Samuel Moyn: That said, you know, boomers were famous for, like, kind of…

Samuel Moyn: reducing Gen Xers to kind of, like, ride on their coattails.

Samuel Moyn: And we've kind of slid through our lives. We haven't been the worst-off generation, and as usually children of older boomers.

Samuel Moyn: we've kind of been treated well and have been set up, for our futures. I think what's very interesting that millennials are those who are.

Samuel Moyn: hateful at times, but… and also maybe more justifiably rageful, because they experienced the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.

Samuel Moyn: as something that really shut down their life prospects. And the data is staggering, especially if you look at the wealth

Samuel Moyn: Front, where already by 2008, the boomers or older people had been increasing their in… the income, age gap and the income wealth gap.

Samuel Moyn: that we inherited as Americans. And after 2008, it got worse, so that, you know.

Samuel Moyn: older Americans recovered pretty well from 2008, but millennials have not. And there's been a slight reversal of this after the pandemic, but the millennials have gotten the short end of the stick historically. They're not riding our coattails.

Samuel Moyn: And so, they also can expect to inherit if their parents have

Samuel Moyn: The house or the wealth as soon as we will.

Samuel Moyn: Since the boomers are dying. So you do see some, I think, very justified anger on their part. Where I think, we need to, you know, call them to account is when they do have implicitly the view that older people are worthless and just need to be shunted aside, maybe their lives aren't worth living.

Samuel Moyn: And I disagree with that strongly. I think we need to take better care of older Americans. We need to give them an out.

Samuel Moyn: We do need to, encourage, incentivize, force them to give up

Samuel Moyn: the, like, hierarchical superiority they enjoy in all of these terms, dominating political offices, dominating elections, dominating the economic landscape. But we want to make sure that they retain a sense that they matter, they're relevant, they're significant, they get a safety net.

Samuel Moyn: So they don't have to think they need to save to avoid a decline in which they're, you know, kicked to the curb, or, you know, really left without resources. And so, I think it's… we need intergenerational solidarity. And all of these generations have their own unique experiences and characteristics. The trouble is we're all together

Samuel Moyn: suffering from gerontocracy, and I'd argue that includes older Americans, who aren't always powerful or wealthy, but that's in part because of the policies that boomers have made over time.

Geoff Rogers: So… How does a… how does a society…

Geoff Rogers: how does society function when they… when you… when you guys were just talking about… we've skipped a whole generation, so all of… I see that generation as potential energy that is sort of shunned aside.

Geoff Rogers: Does that… and I… I guess…

Geoff Rogers: How does… and then, more importantly, how do you sustain a democratic society when you're sort of

Geoff Rogers: You know, you've moved out of the mainstream a whole generation of people.

Geoff Rogers: I mean, how does that work?

Samuel Moyn: Well, it's… it's, you know, it's a huge question, and I think we have to disaggregate a little, because we have to decide, is the main problem getting more youthful politicians in the mix? Because that's already happening.

Samuel Moyn: Or is it reforming the voting system? Because it doesn't much matter who the politicians are if the voters are calling the tune. Right.

Samuel Moyn: Or is it really more economic? Because there are economic foundations to everything, and we need to think about, you know, who gets the plum jobs and sits on them.

Samuel Moyn: And either keeps younger people from entering the pipeline, and ascending in their careers,

Samuel Moyn: or, you know, who controls the housing. And there, it's absolutely extraordinary that the age group likeliest to own a home in the country is 70 to 74, and the age group second likeliest to own a home is 75 and above.

Samuel Moyn: And they also control supply, because we make, decisions about what to build and where at local meetings that older people predominate at, and they block

Samuel Moyn: housing. And so, it… that's an… that's a case where we just can't let this, like.

Samuel Moyn: unhoming of so many people, reducing generations to renting continue.

Samuel Moyn: And the same, I think, is true about wealth in general, where in your… if you're a Gen Xer, you're actually likelier to inherit more in the greatest wealth transfer that's ever happened, that's going on right now.

Samuel Moyn: than millennials, let alone Gen Z, but you have had to wait so long, and my concern is that every generation is going to have to start waiting to enjoy the political power and the economic power

Samuel Moyn: that the boomers have been lucky to enjoy first. And so, I think democracy can't just be about the politicians, it has to be about, the whole democratic system, but that also includes a kind of economic democracy.

Samuel Moyn: Where we need to distribute resources fairly and at the right time in people's lives.

Geoff Rogers: Right.

Geoff Rogers: So…

Geoff Rogers: Do you have… what… do you have, like, an average… a picture of what… who…

Geoff Rogers: Who is, Durant? Durant?

Geoff Rogers: Well, how do I pronounce that?

Samuel Moyn: Autocrat, yeah, Gerard.

Geoff Rogers: That's a ratified.

Geoff Rogers: Do you have a picture of that?

Samuel Moyn: Absolutely. So, you know, we could… as with all things, we could take, like, a wide view or a narrower view, because we could define it in different ways. And of course, the most obvious way is to say those people who have the formal

Samuel Moyn: Jobs and keep them, you know, beyond the… like, when they should, whenever we decide that is.

Samuel Moyn: But I think we should take a wider view. And the scariest… the wider view would be, well, if you vote

Samuel Moyn: even if you have a case that younger people ought not to stay home, you are benefiting from a Gerontocratic electoral system.

Samuel Moyn: And… The same is true…

Samuel Moyn: Economically. So I think anyone who has excess resources that they have because they're age-related, if they're paying low taxes because they… older people have engaged in a tax revolt to immunize their property in particular from taxation, they're a Gerontocrat. And I'd even say, like, there are many

Samuel Moyn: people, many millions, who may not derive direct benefits from their age, but are participants in the Gerontocratic system. And not to get too edgy.

Samuel Moyn: But, like, if I said there's something in this country called white supremacy, and someone responded, well, there are a lot of poor white people, that's not an answer.

Samuel Moyn: Actually, gerontocracy is a systemic thing in the same way that structural racism is, but then we shouldn't look for, like, individual culprits for what's actually a structural injustice, and gerontocracy is something of that kind, I believe.

Geoff Rogers: Sorry.

Geoff Rogers: I'm wondering if the concentration of power among older people encourages short-term thinking, you know, and so… It…

Geoff Rogers: It prevents us from really taking on longer-term challenges that

Geoff Rogers: And so they remain unresolved, but it also sort of stymies progress.

Samuel Moyn: Right.

Geoff Rogers: What's your perspective on that?

Samuel Moyn: Well, it's… I absolutely believe that, and it's one of the most controversial things I have to say for the following reason. It requires making quasi-biological assumptions about how our views, change as we age.

Samuel Moyn: But they do, and the data is very hard on this. In the background is a kind of theory of our psychology and intelligence that says, we make more creative orthogonal moves,

Samuel Moyn: when we're younger, we retain that form of intelligence for a long time, and you and I, I hope, are not out of gas, but we have replaced slowly

Samuel Moyn: that creative, dynamic form of intelligence with what psychologists call crystalline intelligence, which means we're good at what we're good at. Right. And we're good at being, kind of.

Samuel Moyn: you know, repeated… if we've practiced a lot, we can repeat what we've learned to do. But you can see that that would lead you

Samuel Moyn: maybe to respond to novelty as if it's not new. And I also think, you know, we… we would be tempted as we age and death approaches to.

Samuel Moyn: postpone festering problems, and that's natural, because we won't live to see their worst effects. And the clearest data there is on climate change, that the older you are, the less you care about it. But that means that a political system that's dominated

Samuel Moyn: by older voters in particular, not just older politicians, is likely to neglect the long term. And climate change is a great example. The national debt is a great issue. We've imposed enormous costs on

Samuel Moyn: our children and grandchildren, but that's because we won't be around to pay the piper, and that's intolerable. We should have intergenerational justice, not just among

Samuel Moyn: you know.

Samuel Moyn: Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, but also future generations who are inheriting the world we all build when we're alive.

Jesan Sorrells: So, I have a brief follow-up question here, Jeff, if I may. So I have,

Jesan Sorrells: I never actually talked about this on the show before, so I have 4 kids, right? And they range in age from… the oldest is 29 all the way down to 9 years old.

Jesan Sorrells: I've been… I've been busy the last 20 years. Yeah. And, different people in different generations, right? Yeah.

Jesan Sorrells: One of the things that we were actually just talking about before we hit record on this episode today was demography. Yes. How much of this is driven… and I'm a big fan of the writer and the researcher, Peter Zehan.

Jesan Sorrells: Yeah. His work on demography and geography, and how those things determine the direction of geopolitics, right? Yeah, yeah.

Jesan Sorrells: How much of this gerontocracy is driven by demographic realities that were… that were tied directly to decisions that were made at a generational level around specifically to public policy areas, abortion and the birth control pill?

Jesan Sorrells: When you have more people, you have more voters. When you have more people, you have more taxpayers. When you… not all of them are going to be taxpayers, some of them will be criminals, some of them will be women.

Samuel Moyn: I'm lost.

Jesan Sorrells: nostrils, whatever, but you will just have more, right? How much of this current challenge that we are in is driven by that combination of public policy, which is around abortion.

Jesan Sorrells: birth control pill, which was cultural and social, and then the worshipping, quite frankly, of a culture of youth that actually started with the baby boomer generation, but has continued down through… down through, well, I mean.

Samuel Moyn: Yeah, if not.

Jesan Sorrells: I've got a Jet Alpha living in my house. I mean, you know, the world is wired, you know, weirdly enough towards him, at least in my perspective, right?

Samuel Moyn: Yeah.

Jesan Sorrells: So how much of it is driven by those cultural and those policy issues, these kinds of things that you're talking about?

Samuel Moyn: Well, a lot of it, really, and those are really important, points. I mean, I'm also…

Samuel Moyn: Sure that demography is destiny in many respects, and of course, culture

Samuel Moyn: plays a huge role. In addition, and maybe, I guess, more important than the factors you named, is another demographic development, which I kind of call the great aging in my book, which is just that we all now are born

Samuel Moyn: with the legitimate expectation of surviving indefinitely, and at least into our 80s, since that's the average life expectancy of Americans. And of course, the richer you are, the longer your life is likely to be.

Samuel Moyn: And again, there were always, you know, you'll remember in the Bible, agers and super-agers, but what's new is that everyone

Samuel Moyn: can legitimately expect, to… to age a long time.

Samuel Moyn: And so, the effect of that, in addition to the other factors you mentioned, is, that the demographic pyramid is being upset. So, in every society we know about, up until our own, there were…

Samuel Moyn: More people the younger in age you went, and actually even into the womb.

Samuel Moyn: Because there were more babies conceived than born, and then there were more born than survived the first week, and there were, you know, more in one-year-old than 2-year-old, and so on. And now we have fewer and fewer young people.

Samuel Moyn: And…

Samuel Moyn: If you're born, you're likely to survive, so then the bands remain equal all the way up until the very end of life, which is, of course, much later.

Samuel Moyn: And so that has a political effect, because for most of humanity, societies were young, overwhelmingly, and now they are old.

Samuel Moyn: And so, you know, it's much worse in other countries, actually. America still has a median age of 40, meaning half of Americans are 40 or under.

Samuel Moyn: But in East Asian societies in particular, there are so few young people that the median age has drifted much further up, and they're below replacement rates so far that they're going to have a demographic collapse.

Samuel Moyn: We may, but it's gonna be longer and slower. That I agree with you that that sets up a situation where, you… you will be,

Samuel Moyn: Kind of mistreated for much of your life until you join the new aristocracy or oligarchy, which is age-based.

Samuel Moyn: That's really my main idea. And I'm insisting that, in addition to everything else you said, if it's true, as I said to Jeff, that we have the more creative and innovative folks

Samuel Moyn: Who are not part of the oligarchy, and the more repetitive folks who are old.

Samuel Moyn: that has huge cultural and political consequences. Now, I'm not saying we should get rid of anyone, not saying we should have more babies, I mean, props to having for yourself.

Samuel Moyn: I'm not saying we should get rid of older people, but I'm saying we need to find techniques of giving the younger people we have more than they're getting now and earlier than they're getting it.

Geoff Rogers: What strikes me also is there's this contradiction between the fact that we're a society that sort of worships youth.

Geoff Rogers: But the power is still with people who are… is now with people who are much older.

Geoff Rogers: And in a sense, if these are, you know, if you're saying you're talking about a gerontocracy, you're talking about people who are in control of the media. So, are they… it's an interesting thing, they're actually perpetuating this sort of youth culture while they maintain power of being old, which is a really…

Geoff Rogers: It's really striking as to… it's almost like self-defeating, isn't it?

Samuel Moyn: Well, you know, we have to concede that it is a youth culture in part, and I'm not, like, I'm not making a totalistic allegation. You know, there are lots of, there's lots of discourse about young people, especially in entertainment.

Samuel Moyn: But, that's also changing. So, you know, how long have we been going to action films with Tom Cruise, and…

Samuel Moyn: Was it one of the bigger films of last year, a reboot of a, you know, decades ago film with Meryl Streep, whom I love? I'm not, you know, it's great that she's, you know, around and kicking.

Samuel Moyn: But it's not going to be good enough if youth have cultural power and can go on TikTok for a while while they're waiting. And, you know, if we hew to the standard view, which I think we on this Zoom inherited, that you have a chance in American life

Samuel Moyn: To build a life, to make a mark.

Samuel Moyn: We're not giving that to younger people, and the fact that we're giving them social media instead is not adequate compensation.

Geoff Rogers: And so does… this sort of contributes to…

Geoff Rogers: What you were talking… what you started off talking about in terms of economic insecurity and sort of the weird ways that our institutions are…

Geoff Rogers: Arranged around this.

Geoff Rogers: And the absence of comprehensive support for aging influences the accumulation

Geoff Rogers: And the retention of wealth and power amongst older people.

Samuel Moyn: I think so. I mean, it's many… it's many factors. I mean, so, to continue like what we were saying before, it is really important that we also suffer from a syndrome of youthfulness, meaning that all of us want to preserve ourselves and just be less young rather than old.

Samuel Moyn: And we're all part of that. And that's because of a hegemonic ideal that's about the value of being young.

Samuel Moyn: It's just that if it… if it… if the effect of it is to actually perpetuate the life and power of, relatively older people.

Samuel Moyn: it will have these baleful effects no matter how they look. And that's why I think we need to have a much…

Samuel Moyn: in a sense, less ageist culture, where we all accept the virtues and vices of the aging process more openly than we do. But then it's absolutely true that it's legitimate as we age to fear

Samuel Moyn: irrelevance and neglect, and especially in a welfare state that doesn't include long-term care, which ours does not in our Medicare program. And my idea there is that, in a sense, we… we… we…

Samuel Moyn: insist on, you know, a fairer deal across generations, but one way we do that is more generosity to older people rather than less. Now, if we raise taxes finally, which we've been cutting for generations, they would hit the older

Samuel Moyn: Most, because that too has the money. But we could use the windfall

Samuel Moyn: Not just to, you know, improve the fortunes of younger people, but to make sure that older people are only scared of death, and not of decline, and being abandoned by us in our society.

Geoff Rogers: Yeah, yeah. So, the idea of the…

Geoff Rogers: So, my mother, was very involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She worked for this magazine called Freedom Ways, it was started by…

Samuel Moyn: Oh, amazing.

Geoff Rogers: W.E.B. Du Bois.

Geoff Rogers: And the reason why I'm saying all of this is to say… and it turned out that I sort of found out at… sort of much later that my mother was actually a member of the Communist Party. Okay. So what… I guess what I'm getting to about that is that I heard…

Geoff Rogers: A lot, particularly in the last third of your book, the way you talk about how we have to come together sounds like…

Geoff Rogers: Sounds like… it sounded like socialism to me, which I… I'm not… and I think it… I think it… in… in every positive way, but did you get… did you come to it with that sense, or is there, something else that I'm missing, or…

Samuel Moyn: No, no, I mean, that's right. I mean, it's partly like I joke around because my main trouble in thinking in the way I'm thinking is that the folks who have complained about intergenerational unfairness before have really had the agenda of wrecking the welfare state.

Samuel Moyn: And what I wanted to do is, like, make absolutely clear that actually we need to have a bigger state, a more generous redistributive state. And, you know, if you want

Samuel Moyn: all I'm saying is that we're already closer to socialism when it comes to older people through the Social Security and Medicare program. We need to sweeten the pot for them, too, on average. But…

Samuel Moyn: you know, we… we would fund it through the resources of the… of the old… oligarchs, as I call them. You know, those whose… whose… who have age-related.

Samuel Moyn: preponderance of wealth. On the coalitional point, I mean, you know, the very fact that we have fewer young people means that unlike the boomers that are not going to shake the world on their own.

Samuel Moyn: And so…

Samuel Moyn: we need to find where are the areas of common interests and common understanding across generations of what's fair, and build from there. And we know that, you know, though, like, you know.

Samuel Moyn: we could talk about, like, the histories of anti-slavery or the civil rights movement. These were, you know, central to those were interracial coalitions, and in a sense, some whites participated in giving up a little bit of white privilege.

Samuel Moyn: And I'm just saying, we need to rely on the possibility that older people who have age-related privileges are part of the coalition to give those up, and if that's what we're calling socialism, then I'm a socialist.

Geoff Rogers: which, you know, I think, given what we're facing, I think it is part of the solution. So…

Geoff Rogers: what would you like the folks who are listening, and people who are going to read your book, which I think is a really intriguing book, and has really set up my eyes to

Geoff Rogers: How we think about the structure of society, and how we think about aging, and how we think about the distribution of power and wealth.

Geoff Rogers: How would you like… what would you like the folks to reconsider about all of these things, about the relationship between aging, power, and our collective future?

Samuel Moyn: Well, you know, I wrote this book, you know, in the spirit of your mother, thinking of, like, one of the classic acts you can do if you think there's injustice is what came to be called consciousness raising in the 1960s.

Geoff Rogers: Right.

Samuel Moyn: And as an academic and professor and writer, that's mainly what I can contribute, is to hold up a mirror and say, let's make sure you know who you are. And there are hard facts about

Samuel Moyn: the gerontocratic nature of our society, that, you know, you can dispute some of them, but the general picture, I think, is undeniable once you, you know.

Samuel Moyn: trawl through the receipts I've compiled. And it doesn't mean that my solutions, which are just, like, a list of zany ideas at times, are gonna work, but it doesn't… it does mean that the problem is real.

Geoff Rogers: Yes.

Samuel Moyn: And all I can say is that if…

Samuel Moyn: if you don't have a solution, and you consider mine and reject them, then, like, we need to find some others. And I strongly believe that that's what political movements are genius at. They reckon with a harsh reality, and they see what's feasible, and they have leaders who are creative.

Samuel Moyn: And put new coalitions together, and that's what we need now.

Samuel Moyn: in… in… on this, on this, you know, issue. And so…

Samuel Moyn: It's basically, like, I'm trying to say, this is the information you need without which you can't really confront the nature of our society.

Jesan Sorrells: So, one last lock for me. As you're talking about solutions, I'm a solution.

Geoff Rogers: I'm rethinking this whole thing where you can talk. I'm just saying…

Jesan Sorrells: I'm just saying. This is why he never lets the producer talk, this is why.

Jesan Sorrells: So, as I think about solutions, I'm a solutions-oriented person, just that's sort of how I'm wired, right? And we can have a lot of talk about problems, and we can agree on what a problem is, but there's very few…

Jesan Sorrells: At least across the fruited Plain that I have seen in my career and in my time.

Jesan Sorrells: there's very few solutions that are offered to problems, much less execution on those solutions. So, you said you had some zany ideas in your book. Yeah.

Jesan Sorrells: I look at this as a combination of political, social, and cultural

Jesan Sorrells: dynamics that we've already mentioned, mixing into a perfect storm. So I think it's a three-part solution to the problem, not just a one-part. It's not just political, because we have to shift the culture, we also have to shift society. Now, part of that's going to happen with the internet, I think just in general, that's already happening. That's the social, and to a certain degree, the cultural part.

Jesan Sorrells: The political part will lag because politicians are always late to the party. That's kind of how it goes. They're always…

Jesan Sorrells: They're always late to the party, let's just say that.

Jesan Sorrells: What would you say is your zaniest, sort of.

Jesan Sorrells: cultural solution to this problem, because I think that's actually where it has to start. And when I think about a cultural solution, I see the rise of, at least in the environment that I am in, I see the rise of more and more intergenerational housing, where families are choosing to live together.

Jesan Sorrells: Rather than, you know, I grow up, I go to college, I go away, and now I can't get childcare. Or I grow up, I go to college, I marry this person, I go away, I move back to the town.

Jesan Sorrells: But I don't live in the same property that my parents lived on because of whatever psychosocial thing I had going on with my parents. Instead, I live across town, and then I complain online that my parents never visit my grandkids. I'm seeing culture respond to that and react to that in the spaces that I'm at online.

Jesan Sorrells: Where people are starting to build intergenerational housing, and they're doing it without the permission of the government.

Jesan Sorrells: outside, you know, without the permission of zoning laws, they're just doing it, they're just making it happen, right? So what's a zany solution, culturally, that you would propose based on your, based on your book?

Samuel Moyn: I mean, I love that one, and I'll just say that I pro- maybe prematurely rejected its viability, just because, in my understanding, you know, it could be that you're seeing a kind of emergent,

Samuel Moyn: like, development, but, you know, it's absolutely true that kids in their 20s are moving home with their parents at record numbers, mainly out of necessity.

Samuel Moyn: But it is… it is… it is not true that so far there is a huge wave…

Samuel Moyn: of return to the intergenerational family, in the same residence, which I agree, kind of provided a way of managing some of these.

Samuel Moyn: problems better than… than we do. In fact, what we're seeing mainly, although, of course, grandparents often take care of their children and grandchildren, they do so from

Samuel Moyn: The position of retaining their home.

Samuel Moyn: Which is usually much nicer and bigger, even, than the homes of their children. And they very frequently move across municipal lines, especially in suburbs where you can, in order to avoid taxation to pay for the education of other people's children and grandchildren.

Samuel Moyn: And so, if what you're saying is true, it would be amazing, because I think that would make a huge difference. My solutions, you know, I do think we need, most of all, a cultural

Samuel Moyn: revolution. But I kind of restricted myself to an almost technocratic or wonkish list of solutions, taking these three problems of aging politicians, aging voters, and aging money.

Samuel Moyn: And asking, like, what are things politicians, if they created a coalition, could enact?

Samuel Moyn: And, you know, it doesn't much matter what's on the list, because none of them are cultural, but I agree strongly with you.

Samuel Moyn: that we need a kind of new commitment to live together in one society, whether that's at the level of intergenerational families or intergenerational communities, and share the wealth across generations sooner than we do. And I'd hope that that happens not just within families.

Samuel Moyn: but in society generally. So that we see, like, the wealth that's locked up and the power that's locked up in the older generation is something that could be shared, you know, with the children and young adults and even middle-aged adults.

Samuel Moyn: that are not related to them. So that's my dream, and I think I'm currently stuck.

Samuel Moyn: With the idea that it will take a kind of new generation of leaders to devise exactly how to get us a little bit down the road to it.

Geoff Rogers: Samuel Moyn and Gerontocracy in America. This was a great, great talk. Thank you so much.

Samuel Moyn: Thank you for wonderful questions.

Geoff Rogers: And next time, I have to remember to get a different producer. So… so,

Geoff Rogers: We all… so, I… You can stop it now. Mr. Producer. So…