The Old Are Hoarding Everything. Now What? With Sam Moyn

Join hosts Maddie Feldman and Leighton McCamy-Miller as they chat with Samuel Moyn, the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University and author of Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It.

Best known as a historian of ideas, Moyn has spent much of his career examining the histories of human rights, liberalism, and international law. His latest book turns that lens toward contemporary America, arguing that age has become an overlooked dimension of inequality and that the country’s political institutions, patterns of wealth accumulation, and increasingly long lives have allowed older generations to retain power far longer than their predecessors.

The conversation explores how America became a gerontocracy and what that means for younger generations. Moyn discusses the concentration of wealth and homeownership among older Americans, the extraordinary age of the country’s political leadership and electorate, declining youth participation, and the institutional advantages that allow incumbents to remain in power. He also considers the more personal forces behind gerontocracy: delayed succession, longer lifespans, and the deeply human reluctance to surrender relevance, authority, and control.

Sam Moyn