Gerontocracy in America
12.00–1.30pm | Friday, February 13
Elm Library, 31 Whitney Avenue
Do older Americans have a great deal power? If this is true, what, if anything, is wrong with it? The answers to these questions are “they do” and “a lot”—or so this presentation sampling a forthcoming book will argue. The age of politicians serving in different offices is just the tip of the iceberg of American gerontocracy, which revives a standard premodern form of rule in postmodern form, brought about as a byproduct of the extension of life.
Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University.
This event is open to all members of the Yale community. Lunch will be served.
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Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
—John Kenneth Galbraith,
“The United States”