Gerontocracy in America: Samuel Moyn on How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth

00:00:32 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Thursday, 06/18/2026. Yesterday, we did, an interview with a remarkable 91 year old economist, Mordecai Kurz. He's been teaching at Stanford University since 1961. Quite a an inning. He has a major new book out. It's been acclaimed by economists all over the world, including Thomas Piketty, called Private Power and Democracy's Decline. It somehow integrates his ninety one years of wisdom, or maybe not quite 91, but certainly many decades of studying the world's economy and all the inequalities that go with it. And then at the weekend, I went to see an 84 year old Bob Dylan, in Berkeley, and he was, in my view, at least better than anyone else, and perhaps in some ways, getting even better with age. God knows what it'd be like when he's 91 Mordecai's age. So the old guys that seem to be doing well, but not according to my guest today. Samuel Moyn is a professor of law at Yale University and the author of a very provocative new book, Gerontocracy in America, How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It [as spoken — correct subtitle is “How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth”]. Samuel is joining us from New Haven in Connecticut where he lives and teaches. Sam, what's wrong with old people? I thought they were the wise ones.

00:02:03 Samuel Moyn: Well, I have no trouble with old people. I'm in my mid fifties. I can't. So, it that's not my problem. My problem is gerontocracy. And all I mean is to say that, old people can be great. But what we can't do is over empower, too many of them. And, the reasons are pretty clear to me that it's unfair and they do decline. And we need to take seriously our decline in mortality, and rebalance things in the name of a kind of intergenerational compact.

00:02:48 Andrew Keen: How aware are both old and young about this, what you call this, gerontocracy? I have to admit, I've been looking forward to interviewing you in spite of my admiration for Dylan and Kurz. [as spoken — likely refers to Mordecai Kurz] I mean, you're you're onto something. Certainly, when one thinks of characters like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, of course, one thinks that these old people do indeed have too much power. Could you give us some numbers, Sam, to underline this imbalance, this, control that old people have in America?

00:03:23 Samuel Moyn: Sure. So, really, you know, as you pointed out, older people, really all the way back in every culture get deference. And we tend to look past the fact that they make their own mistakes. They may repeat old mistakes, and we call them wise. Some are, some aren't just like everyone else. And yet when it comes to politicians, we're now well aware because of Joe Biden's crisis in 2024 and really the crisis of the democratic party and American democracy and consequence that cognitive decline is a risk. And we are, obviously dealing with the oldest American presidents ever. Donald Trump may beat Joe Biden's record already. Donald Trump is the oldest president elected as your slide shows. There had been one very old US president, before the twentieth century. His name was William Henry Harrison, and he died of short order in office of a cold. But really it's since Ronald Reagan that we've seen the age of president stray up. Now that doesn't mean there aren't young ones. Barack Obama was a claim for youth. If Donald Trump doesn't make it another year, we'll immediately have the youngest US president in all of history beating Teddy Roosevelt's record. But it's a real thing that our politicians are aging, and I think we have to look beyond the presidency and then in the end, look beyond politicians. But if you wanna talk about politicians, it's pretty striking because I think the first stop, is gonna have to be the congress, the federal congress, where actually political careers have been starting later. And the, you know, age of especially the democrats, not just Pelosi, but a slew of other, backbenchers you might say, has been rising. I do give all the receipts in the book, but what is striking is not just the risk of cognitive decline like in Biden's case, but just of outright death. Several Democrats really, like, more than five died, and they lead up to Donald Trump's one big beautiful bill, which facilitated its passage. But then there's something I think much worse, which is that if you look at the age skew of congress, you find that, there are almost no young politicians in office. And there's, I think, one in his thirties out of the 535.

00:06:08 Andrew Keen: Oh, it's astonishing. I mean and how does that compare historically? I mean, we think, of course, of JFK. How old was JFK? And he was a senator before he became president. How old was he when he became president? How old was he when he became a senator?

00:06:22 Samuel Moyn: I think a senator in his thirties, and president barely 40. But, you know, the real issue I think what you're getting at is that politicians like all of us used to be age and term limited by mortality. And so the real background to this is life extension and what doctors call compression of morbidity, meaning, you know, you decline and suffer serious, like, decrepitude only at the very end of a long life. And, you know, elder people have an incentive to pretend it's not happening to them yet. We all do, I guess. And so it's really the extension of the lifespan. But the minute we say that, we then realize that it's happening to everyone. Fewer young people demographically, more and more old people absolutely and relatively, and that means that the voters are old. The holders of wealth are old. And I think it turns out that politicians are the tip of the iceberg, and Joe Biden was the tip of the tip.

00:07:29 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I hope he was the tip of the tip. If he's typical, we've got lots of problems. I wanna come to the broader cultural implications. We've done lots of shows on the aging nature of our population, the cultural implications, books like The Longevity Imperative. I'm interested in your take. You've talked about congress, Sam, and you've talked, of course, about the presidency. But it seems as if the institution that perhaps in some ways most reflects this is the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is, in some ways, a great heroine for progressives. And yet in other ways, she didn't know when to leave the stage. What do you make of the Ginsburg example, and the Supreme Court model where you have office for life.

00:08:22 Samuel Moyn: Well, so I would analyze it from kinda two perspectives because when we look back at the framers of the US constitution, they actually were very into, elder power. They were actually pretty young men themselves. But when they wrote the constitution, they thought one way to achieve stability in a republic would be to give older people more power. And they did that first through the age of minimums for federal office. You know, the minimum for being president, as you know, is 35 years of age, but that excluded a gargantuan 70% of The US population at that time. And then they created a whole branch of government named after old men, the Senate, which really hadn't been seen since Roman times as an institution. And the Roman senate was not directly about putting old people in power, although the Spartan its Spartan predecessor had been. And then I think the Supreme Court very quickly became a council of elders too. And there, my point is that you don't really need old people or every one of them being old on the bench to have this function that the framers design, which is to counteract the, you know, alleged rashness of young people and the masses generally. But then you look at the Supreme Court today, and it's not just Ginsburg, but our judges may enter young, but they're staying longer than ever.

00:10:11 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Clarence Thomas is obviously I mean, Ginsburg died in office, so to speak, but, Clarence Thomas probably will. He's I don't know how old he is. He must be in his eighties.

00:10:22 Samuel Moyn: He wants to set the record, and he's he's in view of the record to be the longest serving supreme court justice in US history. He may not make it, although it from what we can tell, his health is good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously, had already been diagnosed and allegedly survived one of the most deadly cancers, pancreatic cancer, and she selfishly chose to stay. She had been called and had there been a whole cult around her as notorious RBG, but she became notorious for a new reason when she's died in office, and Americans lost abortion rights in consequence. I would say we can't just scapegoat one or another person, Biden, Ginsburg, because we're always gonna have selfish, folks. What we need to do is think systemically because when we look at the federal judiciary, the constitution lets them stay for life. And actually, Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers insist that it's a good thing that, we let them stay until they're doddering because the reverse would be to give too much power to the people. And he actually opposed a rule in his own home state, New York, at the time that judges had to retire at a certain age. So we're not allowed even without a constitutional amendment to make supreme court justices retire unless we get creative. And if you look below them at the federal bench as a whole, it's absolutely scandalous. Many, many justice judges, you know, much older than our current Supreme Court justices, and there's nothing to do about it.

00:12:06 Andrew Keen: You wrote an interesting piece borrowed from the book in Harper's on the old guard confronting America's gerontocratic crisis. And one of the things you talked about is that we, as a culture, need to face mortality and embrace old age, as the final step. But when I think of the Pelosi example, but particularly the Ginsburg and Biden examples, it seems as if, whilst these people wanted to carry on forever, it's the people around them who have a responsibility. Of course, Jill Biden is, for better or worse, very much in the news in the last couple of weeks.

00:12:44 Samuel Moyn: That's right.

00:12:45 Andrew Keen: Came out with her memoirs, which most people don't seem to believe. Do we all need to learn to tell our aging relatives, husbands, wives, parents that the time is up and that it's time for them to retire?

00:13:03 Samuel Moyn: Well, I'd like to see a cultural revolution in which we did think of old age as something that is, you know, at this point biologically inevitable for most people. It's we're lucky to reach it. But then when we do reach it, we need to, you know, take a last chance to live, you know, our lives before it ends. And that might maybe justifiably should mean a different life. Now I don't, you know, think we should look to the family and staffers of powerful old men and women to tell them to leave because why would they? Why is Jill Biden important? Well, because her husband was president. She has to leave the country.

00:13:41 Andrew Keen: That one, Sam. I mean, if you really care about the legacy of your husband or wife, Had Jill Biden given her husband advice that he shouldn't run again, his legacy would be completely different.

00:13:56 Samuel Moyn: Possibly. But, you know, we'd we'd still have his first term, which didn't go well. And, you know, Kamala Harris, if she was the nominee, still would have lost. And but above all, I think my point would be we shouldn't personalize it. Either scapegoating those individuals or relying mainly on their loved ones or staff, especially who get their power through, that being servitors to these politicians. Rather, we should change the rules so that you have to leave. It's not a natural right to serve in office. And term limits, and I believe age limits are like a rational response to the inevitability of decline. And I think we need to go far further because if we just set those limits, we're gonna have a bunch of old politicians who've done nothing to correct the representational imbalance where so many young people and even middle aged people aren't represented by people with their experiences.

00:15:01 Andrew Keen: Are there any democracies with age limits when it comes to elected office?

00:15:08 Samuel Moyn: Absolutely. Including the American one. We have our most experience with age limiting judges. I mentioned Alexander Hamilton's New York. Half the states today age limit their judges. Some of those are elected. Globally, judges are also age limited in many countries, and there are some, you know, age limits for other kinds of politicians. And then, I also mentioned youth quotas, which is the attempt to make the political class more age representative just like people have tried to, you know, make sure there are more, there's more, you know, gendered and racial representation in these offices. And youth quotas are also not widely, you know, used across the world, but Western Europe in particular has a few examples of them.

00:16:01 Andrew Keen: As I said, we've done a number of shows on this Yes. Longevity imperative to borrow one title of a book. We had, a couple of months ago, Michael Clinton on the show, prominent media executive. He talked about not retiring, but we

00:16:17 Samuel Moyn: Should Sure.

00:16:18 Andrew Keen: Rewire. Clinton's book is called Longevity Nation. He boasts about climbing Mount Everest when he's, in his seventies. Mhmm. Should we push back? Again, I don't wanna personalize this, but Clinton's written the book. So Sure. He's asking for it. Should we push back on this idea on of rewiring? A lot of it, of course, comes out of Silicon Valley. Clinton isn't a Silicon Valley guy, but out here in the valley Yes. More and more technology is tempting us with the idea of living forever.

00:16:57 Samuel Moyn: Well, you know, right now, it's a pipe dream to live forever. I mean, you know, I know Brian Johnson and Peter Thiel are

00:17:04 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Johnson's been on the show, not to you.

00:17:07 Samuel Moyn: So they but at most, you know, they may extend their lives a bit. And I'm I'm for I'm for life extension. I mean, it's it's a bit it's worked wonders for us. If it's, you know, available to all or most, it can't just be, you know, something that the Nietzschean Superman, self styled get. But I also think we need to accept that even with the wondrous life extension we've enjoyed, we do die, and we decline even before maybe in ways that are much graver than we're willing to admit. You know, I don't I'm very happy the man climbed Everest. I've been up to base camp, and I saw a lot of old folks who were doing it. And I'm not saying that's because it's not hard, but I'm saying that's something that people should have a right to try to do. Where I bridle is in putting us all at risk when folks are refusing to acknowledge the risks of cognitive decline or incapacitation or death. Where I bridle is where people are perpetrating injustice on others because it's not just about whether one should, you know, reckon with one's mortality or rewire. The question is also, what are the consequences for the society and in particular for younger people whom one is keeping from wiring in the first place? And so that's the challenge I would put to, you know, the yeah. I forgot his name already. Michael Clinton. Yeah. Well I mean, longevity has been like you know, there are a million books all the way back about the alleged, you know, benefits of and pathways to longevity. And, of course, it's happened finally in the, you know, nineteenth and especially twentieth centuries. I wanted to write a book saying longevity is great, but what are the political costs? And I'll show

00:19:19 Andrew Keen: You what the question is. Call that anti longevity.

00:19:22 Samuel Moyn: Well but I'm not against longevity. I'm against older people keeping too much power for themselves by dint of their survival.

00:19:32 Andrew Keen: The book is called Gerontocracy in America. I know you teach at Yale Law School, but you're very grounded in political philosophy. In fact, you worked and you were taught by a very close friend of mine, Glenn Morgan, who was on the show a couple of months ago. The book, of course, is entitled with a nod and a wink to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. You, in fact, begin the book with a reference to de Tocqueville. When de Tocqueville came to America in the early nineteenth century, of course, it was a very youthful place. I know you also write in the book about Napoleon and the different the changes in the nineteenth century to the idea of youth and longevity and wisdom of the old. What happened, Sam, in the nineteenth century to change how most people thought about youth?

00:20:28 Samuel Moyn: Well, you know, just for background, one of the most striking findings, I think, from the book is that we shouldn't be surprised by gerontocracy because probably most people in most places for most of history have been ruled by old men on principle. In a way monarchy, you know, which the French revolution and Napoleon overthrew was a kind of innovative principle because, you know, even young children could become kings, and queens. But, councils of elders like the Senate and the Supreme court in our day were very common in most societies. And so modernity was a youth movement in part, it was about saying, no, we need to reorient and think about launching young people, into the prime of their lives to do something creative or great. Napoleon was an icon for coming from nowhere, and ascending. And America, in spite of its gerontocratic founders, was always, you know, famous for being, you know, a place for impetuous youth. Oscar Wilde quipped, the youth of America is its only tradition. And I think what happened is that, you know, the longevity revolution for all of its virtues had this vice of leading to a new demography. The boomers were youthful and impetuous themselves, and, they caused a ruckus. But in their old age, they're so numerous, and younger people, are waiting for them to move on. Actually, young people exist in decreasing numbers. And so America is no longer mainly defined by youthfulness, but rather by what I call gerontocracy. And so it's a striking set of reversals across the last couple of centuries.

00:22:42 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Maybe we'll use the title, your comment, modernity was a youth movement for the title of this conversation. One of the interesting things about my conversation with Mordecai Kurz is he says everything went wrong in the early seventies with the challenge to neoliberalism, the challenge to, Keynesianism and the emergence of neoliberalism. Yes. He might say that, of course, because he's nostalgic for his own youth. I wonder whether the gerontocracy in America has created political ideology. I mean, of course, there's the political ideology of believing in old people. But I wonder whether we've had so many people, Sam, on this show talking about the good old days, the good old days of the sixties, of the great society, of LBJ, of, of FDR, of JFK, and, Kurz really sort of captured it and was very explicit. And I wonder whether you talked about the boomers who tend to be pretty progressive. Of course, they drove the counterculture of the sixties. I wonder whether it's kind of frozen into a political ideology that's still supposed to be progressive, but actually is increasingly archaic and conservative.

00:24:13 Samuel Moyn: I think that's a great question. You know, I admire professor Kurz in part because his bio indicates that he retired at some point.

00:24:23 Andrew Keen: He did retire. There he continues to write book.

00:24:25 Samuel Moyn: Of course, which is which is wonderful because it shows that retirement can be a phase where you keep what's worth doing and reinvent yourself before the end. I tend to agree with him that, I tend to agree with them that neoliberalism misled us astray. I've written prior books on that subject myself. But I also agree with you that there's no going back to the middle of the twentieth century as not just Kurz, but Joe Biden himself. And in a certain way, Donald Trump have wanted to do. And that's because the welfare state of that era was premise on a completely different political economy where we had industrialization, trade unions in Europe, socialist parties, or at least a labor party, in The United Kingdom. And none of that obtains, anymore. And that means that if we're going to have a fairer society, which I certainly share professor Kurz's, longing for, it's not gonna be, you know, the same. Now your broader point is, I think, fundamental, which is that as we age, we tend to look backwards. Aristotle said older people are filled with nostalgia rather than hope. And whether that's because of age or because of what political scientists call cohort and generational effects, meaning you kinda preserve your youth ideologically as, like, inside you no matter what changes outside you. It's just the fact that older people are small c conservative. And that means that in the face of Donald Trump, they might go out in the streets for a no kings act, but what are they asking for? Normalcy, meaning going back to the status quo anti Trump. But then we ask a very basic question. Where did Trump come from? Well, from the status quo anti Trump that boomers were very much involved in building. And so I agree with you that we need to not just so much get youthful because, you know, generational conflict isn't our only problem, but think beyond the kind of, you know, nostalgia, that our gerontocracy so frequently has involved.

00:26:53 Andrew Keen: One very elderly politician who isn't usually involved in these sorts of conversations is Bernie Sanders. He's inspired young people. Noam Scheiber, new very good New York Times journalist, was on the New York Times podcast last week talking about changes in the youth vote and increasingly progressive nature. He was on the show, a couple of months ago. He has a new book out, Mutiny, the rise and revolt of the College Educated Working Class. Are we seeing, in your thesis, Sam, in terms of gerontocracy in America, is the sharp leftward shift in young people. You teach at Yale, so you're all too familiar with young people, and their politics in particular. Is this a direct consequence of the gerontocracy in America, that they've moved away even from a faith in capitalism and begun flirting with socialism. I mean, there are many young politicians, of course, or most of the young politicians with any energy, certainly on the left in America, are in the Bernie camp. One thinks of Mamdani and AOC. But, certainly, we're seeing the manifestation of your argument in political terms, aren't we?

00:28:07 Samuel Moyn: I think we are. You know, I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I mean, I'm an old Bernie bro myself, and I think many of us moved in that direction after the two thousand eight, nine financial crisis, especially so called millennials. And that was because of professor Kurz's story, the kind of demons of neoliberalism were finally coming home and folks were enraged by what was happening to their lives, young people leading the way. My view is, you know, we have to think a little bit more broadly if we care about, age and politics because just as, you know, older people are small, see conservative, younger people can be, you know, radical, in both directions. And I agree that many have become socialist and are entertaining that possibility, but many have embraced the far right. And, I think that's because on both ends of the spectrum, gerontocracy is alienating, to those who aren't part of it in the same way that any form of oligarchy, might lead an enraged group to upset the apple cart or overturn the system. And we see that most clearly in the staggering electoral data I report. I mean, the at the median age of the voters in The United States is alarmingly old. It's in its mid in the mid fifties and the best of cases during presidential elections. It goes as high as over 70 in some primaries. Older people dominate local politics through going to boring meetings, but those are the ones that involve land use.

00:29:47 Andrew Keen: But that's all very well. I'm not I'm not questioning the numbers, Sam, but that's because they care. Some people would say, well, young people are they want all the change. They want the jobs and the housing and the wages. But if they're not willing to go to those local, town board meetings, then they're not gonna get what they want.

00:30:06 Samuel Moyn: I think it's a fair criticism, but I think we should turn the tables and say, well, that's like saying peasant should show up at the town meetings of their feudal overlords when, you know, those folks, control the system. And I think when you add the electoral story to the wealth story, it really does become a kind of neo feudal reality. And I don't think we should blame the peasantry for not feigning, you know, that there have the status of citizens when they don't. I report that, you know, these older folks aren't just voting, they're buying elections to a remarkable extent, and they exercise so much power over politics through the biggest lobby that's ever been created, richest, and through the And what's that? The AARP? The AARP to which I devote a whole chapter. So I take your point, and I do think there's room for, young people to mobilize. But, of course, they have to, you know, think that they have a chance of influencing politics. And at a certain point, it becomes less and less credible for them to think that they do, and I worry that we're beyond that point.

00:31:25 Andrew Keen: What about outside politics, formal politics, voting? There's the wealth issue, of course, and there's also the housing issue.

00:31:34 Samuel Moyn: Yes.

00:31:34 Andrew Keen: In terms of these divides between your gerontocracy and everybody else, or certainly young people, what are the numbers on wealth itself and on housing that should most concern us?

00:31:51 Samuel Moyn: Well, so in a capitalist economy, really, even before capitalism, you would expect folks who work hard and save to be wealthier than their, you know, younger, younger citizens. And in a sense, we're all born penniless. So you can only go up from there. And yet the story when it comes to just how much, older Americans have increased the disparity between themselves and everyone else is rather striking. In the early part of this century, those households headed by adults older than 65, had improved their median network by 42% in the prior quarter century. And, those, those households headed by people eighteen to thirty four had seen their, you know, wealth fall by 68% in the same period. The housing story is just a shock because, it used to be that most people could buy houses. And yet in our day, the age of group most likely to own a home is 70 to 74. And the second highest group is 75 and higher. And so, you know, the age of the median home buyer was barely 30 in 1981. It's 53.

00:33:38 Andrew Keen: That's a In 2022. In the last fifty years, it's gone from 31 to 53.

00:33:43 Samuel Moyn: Absolutely. And the bigger issue is that older people are controlling supply by going to those local meetings and voting down builds, including for senior appropriate housing. So it's a really staggering

00:33:57 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's compounded certainly in California by the local property tax

00:34:02 Samuel Moyn: Of course.

00:34:02 Andrew Keen: Situation where Absolutely. It's that the system actively work works against people selling. What's the relationship, Sam? You're a historian a political theorist, historian of political ideas between this gerontocracy and an aristocracy. Because after all, these old people, even Michael Clinton will eventually die, probably die up at Mount Everest, but these people will eventually leave the stage. And they're gonna pass their enormous wealth and power off to their fortunate relatives.

00:34:35 Samuel Moyn: Correct.

00:34:36 Andrew Keen: Is, is a gerontocracy of also, by definition, an aristocracy?

00:34:46 Samuel Moyn: I would say it's a form of oligarchy. You know, for the Greeks, aristocracy was the good form of elite rule and oligarchy was the self serving form. That's how say Aristotle classifies things. The terms ger gerontocracy is based on Greek too, but it's not coined until that Napoleonic era or a little bit after. And, I would define it as a form of elite unfair elite rule. It's just that we can understand contemporary oligarchy, whether it's in the voting system or in wealth, without understanding how old our oligarchs have become. Not all, but, you know, to a striking extent. And so age and class or age and inequality, if you wanna put it that way, can't be disentangled. And that's why I focus on gerontocracy as, like, a new form of oligarchy.

00:35:50 Andrew Keen: And how does it relate to class? Marx, of course, made class very popular over the last two hundred, three hundred years in terms of making sense of politics. Are we still wait maybe you're the aspiring Marx, Sam, when it comes to understanding these age divides, but we're still waiting for our Marx who will tell young people they have nothing to lose but their whatever.

00:36:13 Samuel Moyn: Well, if that's the message, then I'm trying to follow him. I'm I'm telling youth that they are being treated unfairly, And they, you know, are locked in a system where you're right that the gerontocrats die, but they make their children wait until their sixties or seventies to receive their turn to ensure their resources.

00:36:42 Andrew Keen: I'm sure you saw. There was a piece, I think it was in the Times, week or two ago about how more and more, quote, unquote, old people are passing down their wealth while they're still alive. The book

00:36:55 Samuel Moyn: For sure. Well, that you have every incentive to do so to avoid certain forms of taxation, but that could be in the form of a trust or other things that basically force folks to wait.

00:37:06 Andrew Keen: Right. So the book, subtitle is how the old are hoarding power and wealth. We've dealt with that. And what to do about it? I'm sure the publisher insisted on that bit because we these kind of books always need to come, Sam, as you know, with solutions. Is the solution just taxing these people? I mean, what for you are the most compelling solutions for gerontocracy in America?

00:37:31 Samuel Moyn: Well, the most compelling one is that cultural change that we alluded to earlier. I think if we accepted ourselves as transient and living life in stages, we, would think of ourselves as more as more part of an intergenerational succession that should happen in an affair and orderly way. And that would mean that we would need to take retirement as an opportunity. And our state also would have to make it great since we barely have a welfare state in this country. And no wonder older people who don't know how long they're gonna be around are hoarding their resources. They don't know how long they'll have to, you know, pay people to take care of them, in the absence of a welfare state. But I also discuss a wide range of other remedies. I mean, because it depends on the problem. We discussed age limits and youth cohorts. There's a big set of remedies in the voting realm, which range from, you know, easier registration to vote because we punish mobility, which is youthful, mandatory voting, having fewer elections because the evidence shows that the more elections, the more elder dominance of elections you're gonna have. We could even consider changing the weight of the youth vote on the grounds that older people shouldn't have the same voice over policies that the of which they're not gonna see the effects. But then Yeah.

00:39:12 Andrew Keen: That's a very interesting argument. And I know that another political scientist, very popular podcaster, David Runciman, has argued that the voting age should be lowered.

00:39:23 Samuel Moyn: Absolutely. To six years old. So I mentioned him in that, and I definitely support lowering the age, of voting. And it's happening in some jurisdictions. Of course, the labor party in The UK for somewhat strategic reasons is doing that. But in California and Maryland, there are some cities that have lowered the voting age for local office to 16. But on wealth, I agree with you that taxing is the best way to incentivize succession, including with housing. Like, what if we said there's an increasing tax to stay in your big home, which you don't need, and it would, you know, lead you to, you know, downsize more readily, but, of course, taxes on oligarchic wealth. I also call for a return of mandatory retirement in certain sectors. And so What about the cost, Sam? Well, no, I mean, I think any, you know, that's not, that doesn't strike me as a sector in which we need mandatory retirement because anyone can, you know, found a podcast. I've even, you know, been conscripted onto my colleague's podcast, and they're a dime a dozen at this point. And then, you know, the question is who's successful? Who's good at it? You are. And I don't I don't see you as keeping any young person back who wants to try their hand at podcasting. But when you look at some business organizations, CEOs are old, and they're entrenched. Professors, many other examples.

00:41:00 Andrew Keen: Fascinating conversation. Some people will strongly agree. Others will be a little bit concerned. As I said, I'm not sure about Bob Dylan. Maybe, Sam, you should have called the book forever old.

00:41:11 Samuel Moyn: Yes. That sounds that sounds like a good, you know, title for the paperback, and I'll I'll credit you if they choose it.

00:41:19 Andrew Keen: Well, thank you. The book is out this week. It's already got a huge amount of coverage. It's really relevant, interesting, provocative, gerontocracy in America, how the old are hoarding power and wealth — and what to do about it. [as spoken — correct subtitle is “How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth”] I'm pleased that Sam is leaving podcasters out of it, but everybody else needs to get younger. So congratulations, Sam, on the new book. A really interesting conversation.

00:41:41 Samuel Moyn: Thank you so much for having me, Andrew.