Why Do Boomers Still Run Everything?

Data on Boomer Dominance of Society

Photo by Vlad Sargu on Unsplash

Now that Elizabeth Warren has dropped out of the Democratic primary, we know that our next president will either be an overweight 73 years old incumbent (Donald Trump), a former Vice President with cognitive decline (Joe Biden — 77 years old), or an elderly Senator who just recovered from a heart attack (Bernie Sanders — 78 years old).

This sorry state of affairs is just the latest and most obvious example of a broader trend — that boomers refuse to step aside in society. With advances in modern medicine, people are living — and more importantly working — longer. This is great for individuals, but has terrible consequences for the world. Here are 5 areas where boomers still dominate, holding back the progress of both new generations and humanity as a whole.

1. Politics

Below is a histogram showing the age of US presidents when elected. That one outlier at the end is Donald Trump, who entered the Oval Office at 70. Before Trump, most presidents (including greats like Washington, Lincoln and FDR) entered office in their early or mid 50s.

If a Democrat wins in 2020, we’ll end up with a man who’s hair is whiter than a Wilco concert and whose phone is probably programmed to use maximum-sized fonts. While age is just a number, I think we want that number to be lower than 70 for a commander-in-chief.

Looking at the other branches of government, we see that they are equally old and out of touch. The average age of a sitting US senator is 63 and over a quarter of them are older than 70.

Is it any wonder that our elected officials are unable to answer the challenges of the modern world? We made fun of Ted Stephens for calling the internet “a series of tubes” in 2006, but do we think our current representatives know any better now. Technology is changing every aspect of our lives and the people in charge of regulating it don’t even understand how to download Chrome.

2. The Economy

Much has been made of how Millennials are killing everything from cable television to breakfast cereal. What is underreported is how much blame for this belongs to boomers. If we look at how little money the younger generations have, it’s no wonder that they are skimping on nights out at Applebees.

By controlling the government, boomers are able to use their political power to protect their economic interests. After 2008, federal policy has been geared mostly towards defending the value of financial assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that boomer politicians created policies that resulted in the appreciation of boomer assets. By prioritizing the status quo and not engaging in any structural reforms, US inequality has reached staggering levels and most of the nation’s wealth is concentrated among the already rich and the very old. The rise of socialism among young voters is a natural consequence of this.

Data from https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/

3. Business

The bull market in financial assets hasn’t just been good for boomer politicians, it’s also been great for boomer CEOs. For leaders of major US companies, the average age has risen to 56 years old, with many now in their 70s.

Moreover, the trend shows that executive age keeps increasing.

Personally I don’t blame this on some moral failing like executives refusing to retire. However, I do worry about how this old blood is slowing down the economy. The rate of new company formation is at historic lows. Businesses seem increasingly locked into short-term thinking, planning for the coming quarter instead of the coming decade.

Even among professionals, average age has gone up. 30% of doctors are now over 60. Law firms are not expanding their ranks with younger partners. Everywhere we see old people using old thinking, and failing to plan for new problems.

4. Universities

Boomer domination of business and government wouldn’t be so concerning if the young controlled competing institutions. For example, the American university system is a separate pillar of the country, providing the foundation of our economic success through research programs and technological development.

Alas, here too we see a decline. Universities in this decade are beset with problems like skyrocketing tuition, an explosion of administrative staff, and governance issues in research that results in things like replication crisis.

It might be a coincidence, but all of these negative trends coincide with the aging of university presidents. Research from the American Council on Education shows that the vast majority of university presidents are over 60 years old.

College is where the great ideas for the future are supposed to be born. The same boomers who protested big issues like the Vietnam war of the 60s are now enforcing narrow rules about what sorts of halloween costumes students get to wear.

5. The Press

The fourth estate of our society has traditionally been charged with keeping excessive power in check. Bob Woodward was 29 years old when he broke the Watergate Scandal alongside Carl Bernstein (28 in 1972). Hunter S. Thompson was 35 that same year when he wrote the seminal “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”. Our most famous journalists are now much older and much less prolific.

For instance, half of the New York Times oped columnists - the ones that shape the nations narratives - are boomers. Oldies like Paul Krugman (67) and Thomas Friedman (66) pull up the average age of an NYT opinion writer to over 53 years old. While the Times still breaks big stories, the major issues of today are often tackled by outsiders. The journalistic establishment, full of well-paid boomers was actively wrong about Iraq and sat on the NSA wiretapping story instead of reporting it to the public.

As the grey lady starves upstart publications of traffic and absorbs their best talent, it’s clear that journalism as a whole is controlled by older generations. The same structural issues that concentrate wealth and power among old people also concentrate attention into old institutions with old leaders.

Final Thoughts

The world of 2020 is rapidly changing. The United States is losing economic and political power, technological progress is revolutionizing every industry, and global issues like climate change and viral pandemics threaten our way of life. I posit that these new problems require new blood to face them.

The viral “Ok Boomer” meme from last year isn’t a shallow critique of the elderly, but a final acknowledgement that something is deeply wrong with the structure of power in our society. The systems and institutions that we rely on have ossified both physically and metaphorically. They have resulted in problems that affect everyone from the college student to the aging pensioner. Only with fresh minds and fresh ideas can we hope to confront the challenges that face us.