There are also direct ways of recognizing that age affects opportunity and resources. The most obvious is to reinstitute mandatory retirement in those employment sectors (especially white-collar work) where generational renewal has been obstructed for years.
In housing, besides circumventing the disproportionately high elder participation in town meetings where land-use decisions are made, I advocate a progressive tax on older homeowners to incentivize them to downsize rather than retain. The longer you stay, the more you should have to pay. The funds could allow for new construction and other projects of intergenerational justice, especially educational ones that prioritize unleashing our young people into the creative prime of life.
Some people have attacked the elder skew of federal benefits as a pretext for abandoning the welfare state, but improving it is the better choice. Since 1935, the rise of the Social Security program properly recognized the unique vulnerability of senior citizens, and Medicare provides for some of their care and treatment. At the same time, Medicare’s exclusion of funding for long-term care at home or in nursing homes understandably leads the aging to worry that they will run out of money before they pass away, which exacerbates and rationalizes their choice to stash for a rainy day.
Improving the welfare state for all who need it — including the old — could reduce the motivation for holding onto housing and jobs, not just bank accounts and stock portfolios. In this sense, countering ageism and gerontocracy sometimes involve the same reforms.
Ageism has not ended, but that should not stop those questioning and seeking to rein in American gerontocracy.
Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, is the author of, most recently, the forthcoming “Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It.”
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