There is a Filipino custom I have practiced since I was a boy. You take the back of an elder's hand and press it to your forehead. You say mano po. It means, quite simply, respect. It means you acknowledge that this person has lived longer, seen more, and carries something you have not yet earned.
I think of that gesture when I read about Mitch McConnell's prolonged absence from the Senate, or when I remember the 2024 election, when Joe Biden and Donald Trump, both well into their eighth decades faced off for the most powerful office on earth. The jokes write themselves. But the unease beneath them does not.
Into this unease steps Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, with a book that refuses to settle for jokes. Fareed Zakaria recently framed the issue well on his CNN program: perhaps the deeper problem is not simply that our leaders are old, but that government itself increasingly serves older constituencies. That is precisely the question Moyn takes up. His title is a thesis in itself: Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth and What to Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026) (Harvard Gazette). Moyn's argument, distilled to its spine, is this: the problem is not merely that our leaders are old. The problem is that an entire system, political, economic, social has been quietly rearranged to serve the interests of older Americans at the expense of the young.
It is worth sitting with that claim before reacting to it.
What Moyn Actually Says
Moyn calls the result "the oldigarchy" (Harvard Gazette). He means that American oligarchy, by and large, is old. The statistics he gathers are sobering. Americans over 54 are roughly 37 percent of the population but hold nearly 72 percent of the country's wealth (Harvard Gazette). The median age of a member of Congress is over 60. The median age of a federal judge is 68. In primary elections, the median voter is 65. In some campaigns, the average donor age reaches 70 (Yale News).
The wealth gap is generational, not just individual. In the two decades straddling the year 2000, households headed by adults over 65 saw their median net worth rise by 42 percent. Over the same period, the wealth of families headed by adults aged 18 to 34 fell by 68 percent (Harvard Gazette). The median homebuyer, barely 30 years old in 1981, is now 53 (New York Times). Workers over 55, once 10 percent of the labor force in 1990, now make up nearly a quarter of it (Yale News).
Moyn's point is that these are not isolated numbers. They form a pattern. Older Americans vote in every election, especially the quiet, off-cycle ones that decide school boards and bond measures and local judgeships. They fund campaigns. They dominate the AARP, which Moyn describes as the best-funded advocacy group in world history. They receive governmental benefits "by a vast degree." And they have shaped a tax code and an economy that protect financial assets and housing values above all else (Harvard Gazette).
Not a Conspiracy, but a Consequence
The numbers are stark. But the human story behind them is what matters. These figures describe a country where a young couple cannot buy a first home because the median buyer is now 53, where a recent graduate cannot find an entry-level position because older workers-freed from mandatory retirement decades ago have not stepped aside, where the political agenda is set by those who will not live to see the consequences of climate inaction. Each statistic is a door that did not open for someone younger.
What I appreciate about Moyn's framing is that he does not call this a conspiracy. He calls it a consequence of longer life, of capitalism, of democracy itself (Harvard Gazette). More people reach 80 and 90 now. Fewer people are born. The median age of the citizenry has climbed steadily for a century and a half. None of this was planned by a shadowy council of elders in a back room. It happened because human beings, quite naturally, want to survive. And then, quite naturally, they want to protect what they have accumulated.
Moyn borrows a phrase from the cultural theorist Stuart Hall and applies it to age: "Age is the modality in which class is lived in America today" (Harvard Gazette). That line stopped me. It suggests that when we talk about inequality in America, we are also, whether we know it or not, talking about age. The old rich have pulled away from everyone else, and the old poor, Moyn is careful to say are among the worst victims of the system, not its beneficiaries.
What a Senior Might Say
I will be honest. As a senior myself, I read this book with two reactions pulling at once.
The first is recognition. I have watched neighbors hold onto homes far larger than they need, not out of greed but out of memory, every room holds a child's growth chart, a corner where a spouse once read. I have watched colleagues stay in positions long after they might have stepped aside, not out of ambition but out of fear-fear of irrelevance, fear of the quiet house, fear of what comes after the desk is cleared. Moyn is right that anxiety about aging, and an inadequate social safety net, drive older people to cling to what they have.
The second reaction is more complicated. In the Filipino culture I grew up in, age is not something to be apologized for. Elders are not obstacles to be cleared. They are repositories of memory, of story, of kapwa, that deep Filipino sense of shared inner self. The hand pressed to the forehead in mano po is not submission. It is an acknowledgment that a life lived long has something to teach. Moyn himself, to his credit, does not dismiss this. He writes that his vision includes not just stripping power from the old but giving them something better in return: care, dignity, the chance to "reinvent themselves one last time"
The Grand Bargain
This is where Moyn's book becomes, I think, most interesting. He proposes what he calls a "grand bargain" (Yale News). Expand the welfare state for older Americans, include long-term care under Medicare, provide a stronger social safety net, move toward a more communal model of elder care. In exchange, older Americans would accept mandatory retirement in certain professions, age limits for political office, tax reforms that encourage the earlier transfer of wealth between generations, and a greater political voice for the young
Some of his proposals will strike readers as bold, abolishing the Senate, for instance, which he calls a holdover from an archaic tradition of elder rule modeled on Sparta's Council of Elders (Yale News). Others are more modest: relax voter registration requirements, make voting mandatory, increase public funding of elections so that old money does not drown out young voices. He even suggests that votes could be weighted-those with more years ahead of them, who will live longer under the policies being chosen, might deserve a greater stake.
I am not sure I agree with all of it. Weighting votes by remaining life expectancy feels like a solution designed by a logician, not by someone who has watched a grandmother vote for the school board because she cares about the grandchildren she is raising. But I appreciate the moral instinct behind it. Moyn is trying to correct a genuine imbalance. He is trying to say: the young deserve a future that is not already mortgaged.
What Stays With Me Most
Moyn quotes Aristotle: older people "live in memory rather than hope" (Harvard Gazette). There is truth in that. As the years pass, the backward glance grows longer and the forward gaze grows shorter. But it is not the whole truth. The seniors I know-my bridge partners, my neighbors here in Walnut Creek, the readers who write to me from across the world are not without hope. Their hope simply takes a different shape. It is hope for their children, their grandchildren, the communities they will leave behind.
The real question Moyn raises is not whether the old should have power. It is whether they are using it to build a ladder behind them or to pull it up.
That, I think, is the question every senior should sit with. Not: am I too old to matter? But: am I holding space that should be shared? Am I using my years, my resources, my voice to open doors or to keep them closed?
In the Philippines, there is a concept called bayanihan-the community coming together to carry a house to a new location. Everyone helps. The elders do not stand aside. They direct, they encourage, they hold the ropes. But they do not insist on carrying the house alone.
Perhaps that is the image Moyn is reaching for. A society where the old are honored and cared for and where they, in turn, make room. Where the hand pressed to the forehead in mano po is also a hand that opens, that releases, that points the young toward the door and says: it is yours now.
What do you think? Have you seen gerontocracy at work in your own community, or have you seen a different model, one where elders make way with grace? I would love to hear your stories. Your story matters.
- Concentrated Control: Older generations hold a disproportionate share of wealth, housing assets, and high-level jobs in government, courts, and corporate offices.
- Stifled Mobility: The abolition of mandatory retirement and the stubborn grip of aging leaders prevent younger generations from stepping into leadership or building early economic security.
- Systemic Bias: Tax codes, campaign finance rules, and housing market policies are heavily skewed to protect and privilege accumulated older assets.
- Voter and Civic Disconnect: Young people grow cynical and alienated from a political system where policy priorities emphasize static security for seniors over future-focused crises like climate change.
- Robust Safety Nets: Paradoxically, Moyn argues for expanding social safety nets and entitlements (like Social Security and Medicare) so older individuals feel secure enough to step down.
- Mandatory Retirement: Implement clear retirement age caps across high-impact sectors, including politics, corporate boards, and even academia.
- Wealth and Asset Redistribution: Encourage the early transfer of wealth between generations through targeted tax reforms, such as wealth or age-correlated taxes.
- Empowering the Young: Create structural mechanisms-ranging from campaign finance limits to electoral reforms, that give youth a louder and more effective voice in democracy.
- My Reel of the Day: How it feels to be 80 and Above:
- https://www.facebook.com/reel/913471754570296
