Gerontocracy: The Age of Political Leaders

This week we talk about Jimmy Buffett, Boomers, and the Soviet Union.

We also discuss Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, and the 2024 US Presidential Election.

Show Notes

(Notes on show notes: for Wikipedia or other reference articles, please follow source links as they tend to tell you which bits of data are legit and which are less so—these are excellent starting points for info, but ideally not the end-points.)

Some Relevant Links

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/health/mitch-mcconnell-health-seizures.html

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/27/gerontocracy-google-mcconnell-feinstein/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/30/house-gets-younger-senate-gets-older-a-look-at-the-age-and-generation-of-lawmakers-in-the-118th-congress/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_age

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/dianne-feinstein-went-hospital-minor-fall-home-spokesperson-says-rcna98992

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/16/1194115265/sen-mitch-mcconnells-health-issues-spotlights-kentuckys-succession-process

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/raising-social-securitys-retirement-age-would-cut-benefits-for-all-new

https://www.census.gov/popclock/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontocracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/jimmy-buffett-margaritaville-singer-and-beach-themed-businessman-dies-26e63495

Endmatter

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Transcript

Jimmy Buffett, the singer behind megahits like Margaritaville and A Pirate Looks at Forty, died at age 76 the first weekend of September 2023.His songs celebrated a particular flavor of aspirational lifestyle, defined by beaches and casual day-drinking and being overall really, really chilled out; something that contrasted with his ambitious, tour-heavy lived experience, but which helped him become one of the wealthiest musicians on the planet, with an estimated net-worth of around $1 billion when he died, more than half of which came from his touring and recording efforts, the rest of which came from all sorts of investments and business dealings, including the Margaritaville Cafe in Key West, which kicked-off a portfolio of restaurant assets, and then casinos and cruise lines, and Margaritaville-branded clothing and alcohol products.

He wrote some books, he made some canny investments, and basically did really well for himself—but Buffett will probably remain best known, despite his many accolades, for the vibe that permeated all his public-facing efforts, which captured a sensibility popular with folks of a certain age.

If you were born between roughly 1946 and 1964 in the United States, and thus are categorized as a Baby Boomer, there’s a good chance you either romanticize the sort of lifestyle Buffett was a proponent of, or you know a lot of people who do.Maybe these people became Parrotheads—ardent fans of Buffett’s work—or maybe they just like the idea of cruises and beachside vacations and traveling to warmer locales during the winter and thumbing their noses at work when they’re enjoying downtime, completely flipping the switch so they can live as beachbums, even if only for a little while, in order to relax and wind-down and recover from the responsibilities they carry during their normal, everyday lives.

That sense of responsibility—derived from a sturdy work-ethic, imbued in them by their parents, who in many cases survived the Great Depression and World War II, and had habits and values shaped by those eras and events—is one of the key traits often attributed to Baby Boomers, people who are in their early 60s through their early 80s, as of 2023.Like all demographic definitions, this one is highly flawed and flexible and generic, and it doesn’t encapsulate the rich spectrum of personalities and variations included in the age-demo it refers to, but like all such categorizations it’s meant to capture a broad, superficial sense of what a group of folks are like, in this case, pointing at what a group of folks who were born and grew up beginning in the middle of the 20th century believe about the world, what they value, how they tend to see things, and so on; all of it in aggregate, and all of it potentially not applicable to any single person who falls into that age range.

This sort of categorization is super-flawed, then, but it can be useful to gesture at large-scale trends over time, and that, in turn, can provide us with additional ways of looking at macro-scale changes in society, our economies, and our governance.

What I’d like to talk about today is how things are changing in the US, demographically, and how those changes are not, thus far at least, being represented in our government.

—

At the tail-end of August 2023, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went silent and froze-up while answering questions from reporters, those reporters capturing the unnerving moment on video.This mid-Q&A freeze was the second in just two months for McConnell, who—in late-July—went silent for about 30 seconds in the middle of a similar press scrum, that video also captured and shared, everyone able to see McConnell seemingly unable to speak, maybe no longer aware of what was going on around him, visibly not well, but because of how these things tend to be handled by the politicians involved and their employees, also not clearly the consequence of one thing or another.

There have been all sorts of concerns raised since that first video went public, and though these are not the first health-related questions McConnell and his team have had to field—last Winter he fell and suffered a concussion, which required some time-off for rehab before he could return to his job leading the Republican Party in the Senate—these new, overt symptoms have been just really disturbing and worrying, and have served as evidence for anyone who doubted that McConnell may be reaching an age at which it’s time to look at retirement.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for anyone, but perhaps especially for a careerist like McConnell, who many analysts have said is responsible for the shape of the modern Republican Party, the dominance of his party’s ideology in the Supreme Court, and other major political victories over the past several decades; he’s been the brains and strategist behind a lot of these efforts, and the idea that someone with that much power and influence and reputation might be physically and mentally less capable because of the health-eroding effects of age, feels strange; it seems like a slap in the face, but also just bizarre, since he’s apparently lucid and still quite adept at his work much of the time.

Many societies throughout history have revered their elders, holding them up as something more than human in some cases, as people about to inherit the wisdom they’ll soon receive as deceased, also revered ancestors.But in other cases we’ve seen gangs of older, powerful, influential people grab control of the reins of a society and then hold onto them for dear life: the Soviet Union comes to mind, here, as many members of the ruling Politburo, the folks making policy in the Union, were in their late-60s and early 70s, which was unusual at the time.That norm-defying ruling age demographic in the Soviet Union wasn’t a mistake: many of the people who controlled the levers of society in the country were survivors of the Great Purge of the 30s and 40s, which meant those who made it through that filter had the opportunity to grab power and resources that were previously held by others, and from that point forward, they were able to use that power and those resources to bulwark their own positions; a right place, right time sort of situation that allowed them to redistribute newly available wealth and prestige, liberated from the previous holders of those assets, and then lock them back into place, themselves and their friends and family the beneficiaries of those things from that point forward.This cycle repeated itself in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and a group of what we now call oligarchs swept in to take control of the country’s resources, reallocating them to themselves, and then using those assets to bolster their own positions within the economy and society.

Something similar happened in the US with the Baby Boomer generation, as many people and institutions didn’t make it through the war, which led to a sort of churn in power and influence.Many of those who were in control before the war retained that control after, but some of those people disappeared, or their businesses went under, which left big, gaping holes for new, younger people to fill in the following decades.And those who were able to step into those spots at the moment, because they were of the proper age, with the proper know-how, and the proper legs-up that allowed them to outcompete others who would have liked to do the same, were able to basically do the democratic and capitalist version of what the Politburo members did, redistributing some of that previously locked-down wealth and power to themselves and their peers, before then locking that wealth and power into a new arrangement, solidifying their hold on everything from business to politics to pop culture.

This happens to some degree with every new generation, and that’s actually how these demographic labels tend to be created and delineated.We look at periods that seem to be bracketed by momentous happenings that change things, and then slice up the population into portions that may help us understand, for instance, how people who were born before and after the arrival and widespread adoption of the mobile internet differ from each other, and how people who fought in WWII differ from those who were born right after it?

But we live with the consequences of some of these shifts longer into the future, because the average human being’s life expectancy has been increasing pretty steadily since the post-Industrial Revolution era, more than doubling since 1900, recently reaching just over 79 years old for people living in the US.There was a dip the first couple of years of the pandemic in this growth in many countries, but in general, worldwide, this has been increasing steadily as medicine has changed, hygiene standards have improved, new technologies have allowed us to do cool things like screen for cancers and figure out that cigarettes are bad for you; our general lifespan is expected to keep increasing, too, with the Social Security Admiration currently anticipating a life expectancy of around 80 years for men and 83.4 years for women by 2050, and that’s similar—with a year or two of wiggle room—to other estimations.

Important to note here is that there’s a difference between life expectancy and health expectancy, the former being how long a person is technically alive, the latter being how long a person is alive and well enough to function and operate as normal, mentally and physically.That latter figure is also increasing as we get better at tackling age-related conditions, from cancer to Alzheimer’s, but there’s still a lot of work to be done, and many people still lose out on many of those later years of their lives because they’re in one way or another limited or incapacitated.

All that said, this general increase in longevity has meant that with each new generation, people live longer, and thus don’t churn out of their positions of power, don’t step down from their positions of influence and don’t will their resources to the next generation, and don’t necessarily even leave the workforce as the previous generation would have predicted and prepared everyone for, in terms of education and in terms of benefits, which has made it more difficult for folks aging into that workforce, and those who are hoping to accrue their own wealth and influence, because there’s less to go around—more of it is still accumulated in those older age demographics.

This has huge implications for things like Social Security, which has to pay out to people longer if they’re living longer, and it also means the math these sorts of safety net systems rely upon to function no longer work, because older people are getting more than was anticipated, because they’re around longer, and that in turn means folks on the younger end will probably have to pay more to keep these systems functioning, meaning more wealth ends up accumulating at the top and more wealth is drained from the bottom—perpetuating and amplifying that existing issue wealth and power accumulation imbalance.

This also means the higher rungs of business, government, and society as a whole tend to have more older people than previous generations would have seen, because folks are sticking around longer, are healthy enough for more of those years to keep functioning and doing the things they like doing, or feel compelled to do, and that means more of the levers that shape society from the top-down are held by these older folks, even as the population under them becomes younger and younger, on average.

The term “gerontocracy” refers to a society or business or some other entity that is run by people who are a lot older than those they’re managing or ruling or governing.

In the United States, the past two Presidents—Biden and Trump—have been the oldest presidents in US history.Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest-ever President to be inaugurated at 42, JFK was the youngest to be elected at 43, Ronald Reagan was the previous oldest president, leaving office at 78, and Biden was the oldest to have been elected at 77.Trump was nearly 71 when elected, was 74 when he left office, and is 77 today, while Biden is 80 years old, currently, but will soon be 81.

Not all modern presidents have been in their 60s or 70s: Bill Clinton was only 46 when he started his presidency, and Jimmy Carter was 52.But presidents have been getting older, on average, over time—the median age of a US president is still 55 years old, so those earlier presidents are doing a lot of weighing on that figure, considering the older ones we’ve got today—and politicians in general have been staying around for longer and longer, which allows them to accumulate connections, resources, influence, reputation, and all the other assets that allow someone to rule the roost when it comes to this sort of profession.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing: as was assumed by those countless earlier human societies that revere their elders, many older politicians have the benefit of wisdom, experience, and good relations—even with their opponents—to lean on when crafting and proposing legislation.Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell are reportedly on very good terms as humans, despite being at odds almost constantly as politicians, and that has apparently helped them pass some bipartisan laws that otherwise may never have seen the light of day.

There’ve been allegations, though, especially in recent years, that folks in the Boomer generation were able to buy homes cheap, on a single, minimum-wage job, were able to get education free or basically free, and were able to, in many other ways, benefit from the post-war growth spurt that the country enjoyed.There are a lot of quite severe downsides to have grown up and come of age during that same period, of course, too, but—to give one example—the tax-related laws folks in that demographic have passed in the years since, which have been beneficial primarily to people who have already accumulated wealth and assets, at the expense of those who have not, these laws been presented as one example of the older age demographic giving itself more and more of the fruits of a burgeoning society and economy at the expense of people earlier in their careers, who haven’t had the opportunity to accrue the same, and who, because of how slanted these laws and other biases toward the already-wealthy have become, may never have the opportunity to accrue.

It’s also been argued, time and time again, that those in power, those making laws and establishing what’s right and wrong, even to the point of making legal and illegal certain behaviors and trends, are being shaped by folks who are out of touch with how the world is, today, which in turn is slowing down development and prioritizing the preferences of older generations at the expense of younger generations.

Jimmy Buffet’s conception of a good life, while surely shared by some teens and twenty-somethings out there, at least superficially, is not at the top of many young peoples’ lists; young people are drinking less than their elders, engaging in healthier habits, overall, and care about different things than their parents’ generation.Among other differences, young people tend to consider the idea of owning a house as perpetually out of reach, but also an aspirational attribute of true freedom—a pie-in-the-sky dream that would allow them to reduce their crippling monthly expenses—whereas for Boomers the opposite might be true, their house psychologically tied to their work, and freedom represented by being as far away from work as possible.

Again, these are broad generalizations, and these sorts of claims about generations are based on snapshots of data that may also be imperfect, filtered through also-imperfect interpretations and suppositions.

But one of the concerns with a gerontocracy, in addition to it not seeming very democratic, in the representative democracy sense of the word, as those in charge do not reflect those they’re governing terribly accurately—in addition to that, the worry is that those in government might prioritize wildly different things from the majority of the US population, and that may lead to a further accumulation of power and resources in the hands of the already-favored few at the top of the age-heap, that favoring of one generation preventing the other from ever stepping in and iterating things; that traditional churn of wealth and power delayed and delayed and delayed again.

This topic is perhaps more important now than ever before in the US, because it’s looking possible that the 2024 election will be a rematch between President Biden and former-President Trump, who—again—are currently 77 and nearly 81 years old, respectively.Both of them are squarely in older-than-average territory; the median age of the United States was just shy of 39 in 2022, and the retirement age for folks born after 1960, as of 2022, is 67; so both men are well past typical retirement age, but still vying to run the biggest economy, most powerful military, and third-largest, in terms of population, country on the planet.

None of which is something they’re unable to do because of their age; as we get older we’re more likely to deal with health issues, but that’s not destiny, at least not until the very end.And just as generalizing based on made-up generational labels isn’t fair, and at times can be outright agist, prejudiced against people who are older because they’re older, it’s been posited that applying age-ceilings to those representing us in the government may likewise be unwarranted, as some people are spry and chipper and completely cognitively alert and capable well into their 80s or even 90s, while others reach the point where that’s no longer the case as early as their 60s or 70s; it’s not a predictable thing, and even average outcomes in this regard are changing rapidly as our science and healthcare changes.

That said, it may be that age ends up being a significant issue in this upcoming presidential election, which could then lead to churn via other means: folks getting out and voting for younger people with less experience, but also less age-related baggage could prod parties to start pitching and investing in more such candidates, coming to feel in subsequent elections—in stark contrast to how things are today—that having older party members on the ticket is more of a liability than an asset.

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