This article was originally published by Connor O’Keffee at The Mises Institute.
Senator Lindsey Graham died seemingly out of the blue over the weekend after a tear in his aorta. He was 71 years old.
The news was shocking, in part because Graham was a very active senator—he was just returning from a trip to Ukraine—and because he was seemingly at the height of his power, having built one of the most influential relationships with President Donald Trump of any politician.
But another reason the news was such a surprise was that, compared to many of his colleagues in Washington, Senator Graham was on the younger side.
That impression was fueled by the ongoing ordeal of Senator Mitch McConnell. The 84-year-old serving senator was reportedly found unconscious weeks ago after a fall, leading to his ongoing hospitalization.
Early reports that EMS had responded to a cardiac arrest at McConnell’s residence when he was first hospitalized, his wife’s strange trip to China in the middle of all this, and the total radio silence for weeks from a supposedly active senator all led to speculation online that McConnell was faring far worse than his staff and Republican party insiders were admitting.
Others went as far as to speculate that McConnell had already passed away, but that his team and establishment allies were attempting to delay the public acknowledgment of his death until after it would no longer force a special election. That theory gained enough traction online to prompt McConnell’s team to post a literal proof-of-life photo of the senator holding that day’s newspaper.
This all follows, of course, the age-record-breaking presidency of Joe Biden, and the campaign that was derailed because of it. Now, Trump is on track to break Biden’s record and, at the end of his term, become the oldest serving US president in history.
In addition to McConnell, many of the most prominent members of Congress are quite elderly, have been in office for decades, and show no interest in ever retiring. Senator Dianne Feinstein—who died of old age in 2023 at the age of 90, hours after casting a vote on the Senate floor—provides a good example of how many of these career politicians apparently plan to leave office.
With all this happening, it’s easy to understand why many have increasingly come to consider the United States to be a gerontocracy, or a society ruled by old people.
As with just about anything online, there are sophisticated and unsophisticated versions of this observation.
The unsophisticated version simply points to the multitude of examples of politicians remaining in office long after most people would have retired from just about any line of work and concludes that the prevalence of exceptionally elderly politicians is hampering the government’s ability to function properly.
This narrative is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual role of politicians within the American political system.
While American politicians certainly have power, in the last century or so—and especially in the decades since WWII—the bulk of federal power has shifted from politicians in Congress and state legislatures to the bureaucracies that make up the ballooning federal agencies in the executive branch.
The vast majority of those in Congress are simply expected to show up and vote with their party’s leadership on the latest massive omnibus spending bills, made up almost entirely of carve-outs to special interests. Or to pass legislation crafted with diligent collaboration from “experts” at the executive agencies that will receive the new funding.
The most effective politicians will lobby to add additional spending that in some way benefits some special interest in their own district. But mostly, their modern role is to fundraise for their party, engage in legitimizing rituals, and stoke vicious debates with the other party over what are, in the scheme of things, incredibly minor policy issues to keep us all believing that we truly live in a functioning representational democracy. And, especially because the politicians themselves are merely the frontmen for a larger staff handling the specifics on all those fronts, it’s a role that quite elderly people are certainly capable of doing well into the physical and mental decline that often accompanies one’s later years.
The more sophisticated version of the “America is a gerontocracy” narrative focuses less on the politicians themselves and more on what the government is doing. Because, if one takes even a passing glance at how the federal government taxes and spends, it quickly becomes clear that government programs are actively transferring vast amounts of wealth from younger generations to older generations who are, on average, much wealthier.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Many can be traced back to seemingly innocuous attempts to ensure that elderly people without close family members, adequate housing, or connections to any kind of community were cared for. The programs that would eventually become Social Security and Medicare were sold as small programs to help those on the margin. The same goes for the founding of interest groups and lobbies such as AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons).
But as with just about any government program started in the name of helping a small number of genuinely downtrodden Americans, these entitlement programs exploded in size as they were quickly expanded to also benefit whichever groups were organized and motivated enough to lobby effectively.
And even setting lobbying aside, the elderly tend to be disproportionately dependable, and therefore powerful, as a voting bloc. Retirees especially often have more time to focus on issues, call lawmakers, watch cable news, write letters to the editor, engage with local parties and candidates, and vote than their younger working counterparts.
So promising to protect—or better yet, expand—entitlement programs that seniors benefit from is a straightforward way for any politician to secure the support of a lot of enthusiastic voters, while even muttering a half-formed thought about potentially cutting them is almost certain to torpedo any campaign.
Meaning the conditions for the substantial growth of programs transferring money to seniors were already there. But, on top of that, the baby boomer generation—now making up most retirees—has grown old at the same time that medical technology has advanced substantially. So, on top of being an unusually large generation, they are also living longer. That’s, of course, a positive development. But in our increasingly socialized elder-care system, that also puts a growing financial burden on younger generations.
Contrary to what the government’s shockingly effective propaganda says, the money seniors receive through Social Security is not their own money that had been taken from their previous paychecks and set aside to be returned to them in retirement. The money they “paid in” to the program had already been used for Social Security checks for earlier generations and other government programs. The money that today’s seniors are getting through the program is being taxed directly by today’s younger workers—workers who are forced to pay for a much larger pool of Social Security recipients than the previous generations had.
Add to that the other programs like Medicare that don’t even pretend to come from a “lockbox.” Or the fact that some of these programs cover things like golf fees and ski trips. Or the various government programs explicitly helping seniors stay in full family-sized homes long after downsizing would make more financial sense while simultaneously pushing the price of those homes higher and higher. And the disproportionate burden younger generations experience from the Fed’s permanent price inflation—especially the price inflation that came as a result of the trillions of dollars printed to prop things up as the federal government shut down the economy, the schools, and every aspect of life for younger generations to keep the elderly safe from a disease everyone was always going to get anyway. And, above all, the fact that much of this wealth is being transferred into the pockets of older Americans who are much wealthier than the younger people who are forced to pay for it.
Lay all that out, and it’s easy to see why we are experiencing so much generational strife right now. How could there not be?
The justified frustration younger generations are experiencing with the current setup often gets directed towards the handful of exceptionally old politicians and justices at the top of all three branches of the government. But the true root of this problem lies in the intergenerational wealth-transferring government programs that have been built up over many decades. And that will, if not properly understood and subsequently abolished, continue to fuel this generational conflict long after the current group of geriatric politicians is gone.
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