Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 922: The Old Guard: Confronting America's gerontocratic

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

The Old Guard Confronting America's gerontocratic https://web.archive.org/web/20260415150234/https://harpers.org/archive/2026/05/the-old-guard-samuel-moyn-gerontocracy/

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissinance. Every episode we blasts anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news.

makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. Today is Friday, June the 5th when we're recording it, but it's long-form day. So it doesn't matter that you're listening to this on an entirely separate day, probably Thursday, June the 11th. Would be my guess, sounds right. If six plus five is still a thing. And we're going to talk about a very long, long-form article from Harper's Magazine. It's entitled The Old Guard, confronting America's gerontocratic crisis. And Cecil, I really wanted to take a moment to thank you. Because as the person who reads these articles,

I cannot wait to stumble over gerentocratic and gerontology and gerontocratic. It's really tough. I'm reading this today, because I wrote it this morning, I'm reading this today, like the crack of dawn. And I'm like, how am I going to say that word? It's going to be a tongue-tron. How? They're hard.

They're hard word to say. You're enterocratic? But as hard as it is to say, think about how bad it is for us. Yeah. Dude. I have so many, like, conflicting thoughts about this essay. Because I think that many of the points that are raised in this essay are really valid points. I think there's some really valid stuff in here.

And then I think that there's stuff in here that is just wild. problematically wrong. Like where I felt uncomfortable reading it. Let's start with some of the uncomfortable pieces because I'm curious if you were also like, oh, fucking yikes. There's a big chunk of this

essay where the author is talking about the outsized amount of power that the gerentocratic class has political power specifically. I'm talking about people that are older. Yes. And you're talking about people that in this article, most of the time, these are people

60s plus. Right. And, you know, it's like, well, this is the largest voting block. They turn out more in primaries. So they're setting this sort of agenda for who gets to, before the general elections even happen, they have exerted control over who is going to move out of the primary and into the general election. They've established this power block. And then there's just this sort of like absent-minded two paragraphs, like there's paragraphs of this. And then there's sort of this nod to like, well, and I guess like young people could turn out and vote and then that wouldn't happen. But, you know, they don't because they're just not motivated. So and I'm like, well, what's the solve for that? Is the solve for that for me when I turn 60 to be like, okay,

I shouldn't vote anymore? Or is the solve for that for young people to get off their ass and fucking vote? Because I'll tell you what, it makes me furious. I voted every time I could vote from the minute I turned 18, I'm 48, and like, unless I'm in the fucking hospital or dead, I'm going to vote. I have no patience for that. The idea that a group of people has an outsized voting control when they are not numerically the most, paragraph after paragraph about how that's unfair. And I'm like, that's solvable by the people who are upset about its unfairness. It's not solvable by what do you want these people to do? Just stop engaging in the political system as if they have no more say in it.

I literally don't understand what the point of that criticism was. But maybe I'm missing it. So I wanted to bring that to your table first because I don't know how to solve for it. I think there's a couple of things at play here that are really important. One is the representation itself is older. Right. So what we have is an older class of people. people living longer.

So the whole article starts out with this premise that we're starting to live longer. It tells a fable and a Greek fable about a Greek god who wished their lover to live forever, but they forgot to be like, oh, and also they should remain young forever instead they just go really old. And they basically got cursed by the person who was their lover. So it's like a whole story, a whole parable, right? but the idea is is that people are living longer

people are holding on to power longer staying in jobs longer staying in because it's not just about politics there's a big there's a large part about this article that's about like people aren't leaving the job force when we think you should you and I talk about all the time

if you had enough money tomorrow you would stop working right right you would not do this anymore you'd be like I'm done working I won't do it anymore. The moment you are able to retire, Tom, you are going to retire. But there are people who very much enjoy the sort of

the work that is their work or at least the community that is their work or the getting out of the house that is their work or whatever it is that their work provides to them so they just don't stop doing it. And then that doesn't open up anything for people below.

So there's a whole portion of this article that's about work, that's about wealth, that's about housing, that's about all these things that are exacerbated by people that live longer than they used to, right? We live longer than we used to. We stay around longer than we used to. We're more cognizant than we used to. It used to be that, you know, you used to get old and then there would be like, wow, that person isn't there anymore. Let's put them in this home. Yeah, there's more to climb faster. And then that's it. Like, right? And then there are more places, more spaces above to climb and to go. And I recognize that and I get that and I understand that. I think the, the, the

problem is, is that this feeds into politics. So now you have not only this voting block, the largest voting block is the older people, but also the people in office are also the largest block of people. It's not like there's a whole new crop of young people. On occasion, you'll see a young face and it'll be astonishing, right? Think about how impressed people were with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Think about these other young representatives from other places that are, This is their first ever time. They're in their 20s and they're in the House of Representatives. Huge, big deal.

Because there's a guy who's from Iowa, Chuck Grassley, who's like in his 90s. Yeah, that's insane. He's in his 90s and he's still going every day. And he like powers down mid speech sometimes. He just can't stop himself. So he just like, he just fucking freezes. And then he just stops talking. And then he'll lose his place.

He's at this point should not be in the hall. of power. This is somebody who is at this point way too old to be there. I think Mitch McConnell stop speaking in the middle of a sentence. And they just looked off into the fucking far distance. Like he was

looking at something that wasn't there for a really long time. It's happened more than once. And then he had to get the shoulder tap. They had to come to him like, hey, Mitch Mitch, hey, Earth to Mitch, we're still doing a press conference. So this is a real problem. But

you have this older group of people who are the object of the votes. And we often vote for people who seem somewhat similar to us. So Mitch McConnell is getting votes of people in the same demographic age group. Right. If Mitch McConnell is definitely going to win your ticket and you are a person from Kentucky who is young and knows for sure that he's not going to get primaried out of there, and your guy is Mitch McConnell and you fucking hate him

but there's nothing you can do to stop him you might feel demotivated to vote. So I understand the demotivation problem that we have in this country. There's a lot of people that you don't want to support because you don't like them. You don't want to support them

because you think they should move on with their life and not be part of Nancy Pelosi. If you lived in Nancy Pelosi's district, do you think anybody's going to beat Nancy Pelosi if she doesn't step down? No, of course. She's going to stay in there forever. So you may be demotivated to vote.

And so there's a demotivation that happens with this younger group of people. I'm with you to be like, fuck your demotivation. Get out there and vote in these primaries. That's the biggest indicator of who runs later. And that's the biggest way to change the needle. But people don't get excited about primaries because they don't see a lot of stuff about it. They forget about it. That's not sort of in front of their face.

And so they just don't. It's a structural problem. It's a structural issue. Right. so they're not catching it. So I understand the woes of the people who see this and are like, man, it feels like

I'm never going to get ahead. It feels like I'm always losing this game. So why should I even play it? Why should I even participate in this game if I'm constantly getting fucking like rug pulled and I'm getting like essentially bullied and it sucks for me. Why should I even participate?

And so I think the times that they think that they're, that they could, the times that they could do the most are often billed for them to not do anything at all. Yeah, yeah. I do, here's the thing, man, like, and I like these long forms

because you can wrestle with this stuff together a little bit. Like, I understand that, but I'm hard-pressed. When I say it's a structural problem, I guess what I mean is, like, this article to me feels like, like it doesn't seem to be offering any structural solutions of any kind of just seems to be complaining at the end there's nothing it's

just like it's like it's almost like they wave their hands and say the aristocrats do i know and i hate that because like i can't like for me like just saying this is a problem and then we're not going to talk about any solutions and we're not going to identify even where the solution pattern might lie feels like okay well let's just be demotivated more like thank you for extra demotivation when one of his chief concerns on the political end of this kind. And we'll talk about all the other issues. I want to talk about the economy, the housing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have conflicting feelings on all of that. Like,

this article for me is problematic for that. Because at the end of it, I don't know what to do differently. I don't know what policies should be advocated for. I don't know what a solution set for this should be. And all I can do is say, like, okay, well, we've identified that there's a problem. And then I'm struggling to say, okay, well, absent saying that there are term limits and that there are

maximum ages for people that run for Congress I think those are two obvious solutions. I think those are two obvious solutions. So if we don't, if we're not advocating for anything, then I don't know what to do as a person on the ground except for to say, okay, well then fucking show up to vote. Because actually young people

there's a lot more of you, not a little more. There's a lot more of you than there are of them. So if you want things to change and you don't like these people, go to the fucking primaries and start having your voices heard because it turns out you actually have more political power. What you've done, though, is seeded all of it. And now you're mad that the people that you seated it to are exercising it.

And I can't get mad about that. I just don't have the ability to be like, man, when I did nothing and you did something, you won the race. That makes me crazy. I think one of the biggest problems with having people who are, and we've talked about this for years, people who are. in my opinion, too old to be in office. And I think there is a maximum age,

and there should be a maximum age. It's just like when Christians are in charge of something and they're people who are end times Christians, right? End times Christians don't give a fuck about the world in general. They don't care about the longevity of the world. Because to them, tomorrow, Jesus could blink his eye and everybody goes up to heaven who deserves. that anybody else dies down here and burns in hell

because they're mostly sadists and crazy. And so to them, they don't fucking care if this place is running out of water or this is a problem. Like the story we just covered last week that we pull all the data buoys out of the ocean, right? All these $300 million network of data buoys that collects data on the ocean,

we just pull that out. doesn't fucking matter to Mike Huckabee. Right. All he wants to do is get the right type of cow to Israel. Yeah. So he could start the end times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's no different than Chuck Grassley,

who probably within a couple years isn't going to be around anymore. Yeah, right. So what you have is a group of people who are nearing the end of their life, who don't have to worry about anything they leave behind, right? The old adage of, you know, like planting the tree that, you won't be able to sit underneath for shade or whatever it is. I don't know the exact maximum. But you know what I mean, right?

Like, be a person who plants trees that you won't ever get to enjoy the shade for. I don't know the actual thing. But you know what I mean, right? That's a, I'm saying it worse than it should be said. But you understand what I mean. It's the thing stripped of all its poetry. It's basically, what I did was I kept the meaning, but I threw all the good shit out. But in any case, like, that's the thing is,

they're never going to get to enjoy this stuff and they are not planting any trees. That's the real problem is that what we have is a group of people who have grown up systemically. Not everybody, right? Not everybody who's in that age range is selfish. Right.

But they're sure as fuck is a lot of them that are selfish, right? They grew up during a time where I think there's selfishness and that sort of very bare bones capitalist mentality is prized. And so for them to get the best thing they can for themselves, period, and fuck you, is the most important thing. Yeah, that's the ethos.

That's what they were, that's the mindset that they were given. So they are going to clear cut. And they're going to clear cut even closer to the ground because they don't care what comes next. So it's a real fucking problem for young people. that should be the most motivating thing in the world if you are a young person. Yes. That should get you out to fucking vote for dog catcher.

Dude, every fucking time. Because if you keep doing this, look, man, there's a guy in there right now who literally hired people to like take fucking weather computers and put them on a trap thrower and shoot them with a shotgun. That's the guy who's in there right now who's given free reign to the person. Project 2025 people to fire and delete data and to strip the government of any kind of, like, regulation whatsoever. Right.

That's horrifying for you. 35 years from now, we will be feeling the effects of this. And they will. 35 years from now, gosh, I hope Trump, man, if he lives 35 more years, he'll be in his hundreds. That's amazing. But 35 years from now, you're right. They won't be feeling.

Stephen Miller might not even be feeling effects of this, right? Because there's no way you can live and look like that for that long. There's no way. So, like, these people will be dead. So they don't fucking care, man. They don't care. So this longevity, I think, is the, that's the most important part of why you should get out there and vote.

Yeah. Like, I think that that's, I think that's 100% the problem. It's funny because, like, as a parent, like, my kids are now old, two of of my kids are now old enough to vote. And it is not their choice in my house, whether or not they vote. That's fucking crazy. They're going to vote. Like, they're going to vote because, like, it is an important civic responsibility. And responsibility should be thought of as non-optional. They are not, like, allowed to abstain from voting and live in my house. That's not a thing. I don't understand this idea that a civic responsibility to engage in our public life and our public discourse is something that we're just sort of blazze about.

Because I guarantee if somebody said you can't do it, all of a sudden, all those people who don't vote would get all pissed off because they can't do it. And then they instead choose simply to not do it. And I have just no interest or patience in that. You want things to change. Awesome. Do the only thing, even if it's minimal. even if it feels like a drop of water against a boulder. I get it.

But do the thing. I can't read this article and be like, oh, man, those old people are fucking us over. Like, that's not the solution to me. Because what am I going to do with that? I'm going to go to a bunch of old people and say, hey, old people, stop having grown up with a zeitgeist built around this like 1970s, 1980s era capitalism. What is that? That's not going to change anything.

The thing to change is to be like, hey, Finn, Donovan, guess what you're doing this Tuesday? day. Well, I think you're getting your ass up and we're going to vote. And they're going to be like awesome because they understand their responsibility. I think the people in our age bracket and younger, right? So like we're at this point. You and I are closer to these people. Right.

And we are to like Donovan and Finn. Yeah. Right. You and I are closer to the gerontocracy. Yeah. Then we are to to your children in age range. Yeah, 100%. So, but but even people in our age range.

and the millennials who are younger than us, how many of them have either had complete dumer mentality when it comes to politics for their whole life? Yep. Or are these people who are actually the demotivators? They're the ones who are like, it's the same system, it's rigged for you,

it's the same thing, both sides are the same, so they think everybody has to be perfect or way more perfect than I think that, even is possible in politics. So they're demotivating people, right? I don't know how, I don't know what their effect is. I'm seeing them rumbling now

because of the fucking midterms, right? I'm seeing the rumbles. I'm seeing people say, well, gosh, it's the same thing. They're posting memes that are the same thing. They're posting videos of people who are saying the same thing over and over. And they keep doing this demotivation thing

where they are trying their best to demotivate that group. And I wonder, how much of that is a concerted effort from all the different places that can be concerted efforts, whether that's foreign, whether it's domestic,

whether it's party-based, to try to astro-turf those areas to try to be as demotivating as possible to the largest voting group. I think that that is a huge element of it. When you're talking about like the discourse online, I think a lot of that is manufactured and created, and they allow that snowball to viciously descend downhill.

I think a lot of bad actors, to your point, like foreign actors and conservative lobby groups, etc. What they have figured out is something really important, which is that a progressive who demotivates others is de facto a conservative, because what they have done through their demotivation is they have done the work of the conservative party of stopping progress and making sure that nothing changes.

That's the goal of the conservative party, party. Stop progress, make sure nothing changes. If you're a progressive who doesn't engage the political system, you're actually behaving conservatively. You cannot be a progressive who doesn't perform those actions. What you are then is

just a fucking liar. That's just true. And like I read this article and I'm like, awesome. All right, so I get it. I understand why it hurts. But like the response to hurt and the response of anger should be motivating. We have to figure out

how to do that. Like my whole life, I think your whole life, if I get mad about something, I want to stand up and go fucking do something about it. This idea of getting mad and then curling up in bed does nothing for any of us. We got to figure out how to get past it. I understand it's a human response. I'm not shitting on the humanity of it. I know that that's a reality. But like, it's not working for us. It's working against us. It's creating progressive conservatives. And I can't stand it. I like, I want to shift over to the economics part of this article because like a big part of it was about how as people age, they hoard wealth. And that hoarding of wealth is problematic for all the reasons that we think it is. And again, like I'm not trying to like, I feel like a crazy

person reading this article because I thought like, but we don't have social safety nets that care for our elderly. That's the problem, right? So like, as I turn, as I get as I'm now closer to to 50 than I am to 40, I am very worried about creating a retirement that I can tap into for myself and my wife that will last from whenever we retire, hopefully we can. Right. Now, a lot of people can't retire because there's no money to retire. But hopefully we can retire. Hopefully we can do it. And then I know how long I'm going to live. So it's not like I can say, okay, well, I need 30 years of money or 20 years of money or 26 years. I need an amount of money that to some degree, agree will self-sustain itself long enough that I don't end up old, unable to support myself,

unable to find work with no social safety net. And because there's, I looked this up after I read this article to see, am I crazy? I'm not. An enormous, enormous number of people in this country who are 50 years and older are fucking right there on that poverty. Sure. It is scary to be looking for work as somebody 50 years and older. Sure, man. It is not. good times. So like, okay, well, don't hoard wealth because it creates all these problems. Absolutely wholeheartedly agree. What's my alternative? Well, there's no social safety net. You don't know how long you're going to live and we don't have intergenerational households, but don't hoard your wealth. Again, what am I supposed to do?

If the answer isn't, we create massive structural change to provide living wages, pensions, social safety nets that care for people that allow them to retire and move out of the workforce and make room, and they can still, they don't have to decide between eating cat food and paying for their fucking prescriptions. Because we haven't, we've decided not to do that. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.

Well, I think you just named all the solutions, though. Yeah, I just, I mean, like, you did name all the solutions, but I think you've got to, you've got to know it's a problem before you can make a solution. So it's important to know that these things are true, right? You had to look it up. Right. You had to look up. I was like, I know a lot of people are poor and in danger.

That's a horrible thing to, know, right? Like you're like, oh, oh, that's a real issue. That's a systemic issue in the United States that needs to be fixed, right? That's a real problem for people who live here. So you need to know it exists, and you wouldn't have had that impetus if you didn't read this article. So it's important. I recognize that they don't give any solutions either. Right. But I do think that knowing that there's a group of people who have money but are keeping it should tell us all that the very ultra-rich

have been picking our pocket for a long time and turning the spigot down on anything that we could even call a social safety net. Think of how much they have turned that down throughout your entire life.

Right. So all those issues, I mean, I think about the way in which they talk, even talk about things like food stamps, things like SNAPs, things like SNAPs. things like universal pre-K,

listen to the disdain that they have when they talk about paternity leave. Listen to the disdain in their... They've convinced the people on their side that that is a bad thing to have. These are not ultra-wealthy people. You can't have a Republican Party that is ultra-wealthy.

They're not. They don't have all the wealth. A large voting block of their party is ultra poor. They've convinced them that they should hate the things that would be able to support them when they lose a job,

that would be able to support them when they are underemployed, that would be able to support them after they retire. Think of how many pension plans these people have pilfered. Think of how many times... I mean, how many...

When you were growing up, look at like the people that were in unions, right? Those people that were in unions. And they had, pensions, right? I remember there was this guy, my dad was a truck driver and there was a guy used to know who was a truck driver or his dad was a truck driver too. And his dad was a union truck driver for some ungodly number of years, right? And he had a full pension. I remember going

over to his house when this guy was in high school, going over to his house and his dad was home. And I was like, oh, your dad's home. He's like, yeah, he's retired. He was like 55. And he had stopped work and he's like that's it because he was getting all the same money essentially that he would make his entire life right he worked at all those years he earned it all that stuff didn't earn the top of the wage had to put into a kitty so that he could then pull from that money because everybody else puts in there too and then he would have a pension i have no idea how long he kept that pension afterwards how badly it got pilfered right but but those pensions were were a thing for a long time. There were people in the world in the United States that had full pensions

afterwards. Think about how many people you know that are working that have a full pension. You know what's crazy? Government workers. The only people I can think of off the top of my head that I know, and I know there's more, it's people who work for government. Yeah. So teachers. Teachers are federal employees. You know, they have a pension. They have a pension. But like, yeah, you're right. We haven't, we haven't created a way, and really the 401k tax exemption, was really a way to destroy the pension system in this country. Yeah. And it did a very effective job. And like, we think of a 401k as this, like, big benefit that our employer gets us. But our employers put less money, even if they match, like the numbers are very stark. Employers put less money away when they match into a 401k than they

they ever did to create a pension for their employees. So this was a massive corporate, gift when they did when they when they when they basically killed the pension worked to like cripple the unions and then said okay but the thing that you get is a 401k that you contribute yeah that you were the you have to basically funding it if you don't yeah right it's yeah exactly i remember when i was working at the at the at the job i had they had a 401k and you had to put in a certain amount and then they would match it yep they match they don't they don't add on their own and and we also have so many people in this country who are at or near the poverty line all the time. And that money, they can't set it aside because they don't have enough money to build that up. People are retired. And Social Security

doesn't, it's a fucking joke for most people. The amount of money you're going to get from Social Security is on. You're not going to live off of that. Yeah. So like, I am, I, like, and it feels to me like the solutions here, it's like, well, we could have, we could have social safety to take care of people. We can make it easier and more beneficial for companies to rebuild pension systems so that we have working cis financial systems to support the elderly. We could have transportation that was cheap and free so that people didn't have to also have a car and also pay those costs. There's so many things we could do to make not working anymore possible to free up that space in the workforce. Because I think that that's the

that there are a small handful of people who do work because they just want to work. And like, I also think that there's something to be said for, it's good for our minds to work. Sure. It's good for our social. Like, so I don't know that like just quitting your job and being like, well, now I don't have any of those connections. I don't have any of that reason. I don't have any of that purpose.

But we do is we do nothing. And then we expect people to age into a system of indifference. Yeah. It's not their fault. Right. I think that's an important. piece to point out. In this article... And there's so much anger at old people. I guess that's what I'm like.

Yeah. There's a lot of anger in this article from a person who's older than us. Yes. Who's mad at that, and in a lot of ways, sounds like they're mad. It's not the people's fault that that's the system that they're in. I will say it's some of their fault, obviously, right?

The older people did make this system, right? So some of these people. And many of these people voted for this. On the average, more conservative voters skew or, So we know that that's true. So I don't want to be like, they have no blame. Of course they have some blame.

But it's not their fault that this is the system. It's certainly not the fault of the people who, like, they're on the lowest end of this totem pole, right? It's not their fault they're in this position. It's our structural problems that we've had for so many years and the literal pilfering of not only government programs, but because, look, the money that we save in, taxes has to go somewhere, right? It has to be, get hoovered up somewhere. Right. We can't just keep

spending the money on Social Security if you cut taxes for people. Listen to like some of these people, their literal answer to everything is cutting taxes. I mean, that's literally the answer to every single problem. You'd be like, hey, man, we need more environmental protections. Cut taxes. Yeah, right. Yeah. They don't care what it is. Whatever it is, cut taxes. And you see some of these people that will say these insane things. Some of these politicians will say the most insane things about how we need to keep trying trickle down. How that is the thing.

Like they somehow still think that's a real thing. Even though we've never seen. Like, I don't know how many times we've all been holding our hands up to this guy like waiting for a mama bird to drop something in it. But it's been my entire lifetime. And I've been hungry the whole time. There's not a whole lot of trickling down. I mean, there's definitely a whole lot of like,

like certainly something on your face, but it's certainly not anything you want on your face. But they don't fucking, these people don't care. And they've been pilfering this system forever. And they have taken, I mean, it's like, it's like a car that is literally held together by the last few bolts, right? Right.

Every rim is on by one lug. Yeah. Every single piece of the car has every single bowl. stripped out for because they wanted to save as much as they could and give as much as they could to the factory owner. And that's what it is. I mean, that's what we have. That's the system we have to work in. You got to build that up. And I think there's no better way to do that through unions, through people that, I mean, unions is the way to do it. I mean, if people had bargaining power in this country to fight against, because we said before the oligarchs are going to do what they're

going to do anyway. They're going to try to make the money. They just want to make as much as they can. Oligarch to be garkin. So, man, if you could fucking unionize Amazon and Jeff Bezos goes from making $30,000 every two seconds to $15,000 every two seconds, what's the harm? I know. Who did you hurt? You didn't hurt anybody. The guy is still going to be fabulously wealthy. He takes a nap and he outpaces your salary for the year.

So he's going to outpace you no matter what. So whether or not you cut that profit margin in half, no one was hurt in the fucking making of that film. Yeah, man. Yeah, 100%. Like, it seems like what we should be advocating for, too, is like we should be advocating for estate taxes. Yes. Oh, for sure. So because, like, right now, like, and I, you know, it's funny because maybe this just hits me because I am worried about retiring.

Like, I am a fearful of growing old because, like, I recognize that. There's no system in place to protect me if I get old or if I'm unable to work. And I think of my dad. And my dad at 53 had this massive heart attack. He had to sell his store that he used to own. And then he barely scraped by. He was driving a school bus. And he basically got by because his, for lack of a better term,

his long-term girlfriend helped him pay the bills for 30 years. And if he didn't have her, we probably would have been in real dire shape. Like driving a school bus does not keep the lights on. You know, it's like $12 an hour. You know, it's not a lot of money. So I think about him and he just, he was, he was one healthy event away. And I think about myself and I'm like, everybody can be one health event. Sure.

And you can't control. I can't control. I get a car accident on my way home from the studio, you know? And I'm like, all right, well, so I've got to make these provisions. And I need to make provisions that will outlast me. But then I'm happy to give them back, right? Like if you're going to force me to hoard money to protect myself against, because there's no system in place to protect me and the system you want to build is this individualized system,

then awesome. Then when I die, 80% wealth tax. It all goes back into the kitty now. Now, if I accumulate it and then I use it and I build it my own wealth and now I can live until 90 or 80 or 70 or whatever, I've got to prepare for the whole gamut. But then when I die, it doesn't just like pass down to my heirs who now have also aged, right? Because like now you're kids. Let's say you're 85 when you die.

Well, your kids are probably 60. So now they're in that. And what you've done, you've passed money down from an older generation to the new older generation. You haven't really done it. So, like, we could create an estate tax system that made sense. And, like, almost all of that wealth that people are complaining about is concentrated in the hands of a tiny percentage of people.

You could have those ultra wealthy people pay for pensions for everybody. Like, if you just taxed, like, the top. one half of one percent of people's of those people's income at a reasonable rate and everybody gets a pension and all of this is moot. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's that easy to solve. Yeah.

I think you have to solve it that way, though. You have to, I think you have to have a way bigger social safety net for people. So there's more incentive because, like, if you were to turn to all the people who have to have to, not want to, because I think there's a difference between have to and want to, right? Because there are people out there that maybe retire, maybe doing okay, but they're like, you know what, I just want to go be a Walmart greeter. Because I just want to, I want to have, I want to get out of the house. I want to see you. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking with the people who never want to work again. They've been on their feet. Think about this.

What was the last time you worked on eight hour shift time and you were on your feet for eight hours? Oh, it's been a long time. It's been 30 years. I'm fortunate enough that I don't have to do that. 20 years? 20 years. Same thing with me, right? I worked at a plumbing supply warehouse. I was on my feet for 12 hours a day all the time I fucking it was a tough brutal job that was the last time I did that and I was in my 20s

right that was a long time Do you imagine doing that now? No I couldn't do it I would fucking fall over Like there's no way I'd be able to do it I don't even know that I could work myself up to doing it right I would need 30 years of practice

to do it right There are people who've been doing that their whole life Yeah they've been working in that industry in this industry or the other industry or whatever it is that our whole life, they want to stop. They don't want to do it anymore.

Right. They can't. Right. They're stuck. They're stuck. They're in this position. They've got to go to work. Everything hurts.

Those are people who want to stop. There would be a job there. There would be something for them. They would then get taken care of. Like we all need when we get older. They would all be taken care of. And then there would be a job that would be, and that job would be putting a lot more money

into the economy. So much. Because they have to build from nothing. Think about, I mean, I know you were in the same situation I was. When I got married and I was just out of college, it was all I could do to scrape two pennies together.

Man, everything was a chore. Everything was a save. Everything was a this. Everything, I mean, like it was all just a, my wife lost her job, my first year of marriage. And we had to move, we had to downsize our apartment. We had to move back to the city. we initially moved to the suburbs.

We had to move back to the city because it was the only way that we could actually afford for me to go to work anymore. It was a brutal time. And we lived in a tiny little shitbox place in the middle of the city. I mean, it was a nice neighborhood,

but it was the tiniest little place. We had a mattress that was on the floor. For most of my first five years of my marriage, I didn't have a box spring. I literally just had a mattress on a floor. So like everything it was to fucking rub two pennies together to try to make a third one.

one. There's so many people out there right now in that exact same situation. And then there's no job for them. Right. They don't have anything that can help pull them out of that. It took me a long time to get out of that. But I pulled myself out of it because I was able to have opportunities that opened up to let me in those places. Those opportunities don't exist anymore. They're closed at the top. Yeah. So how do they do? How do they build up that stuff? But if you allow for those people to come into the workforce, now suddenly you have a whole bunch of people that are now buying a bunch of shit. I got to get a TV. Well, that's money in the economy. I got to get a new car. I got to get this. I got to get that. I've got to build my life. They can't even do that.

No. Yeah. It's we've created a, like, I am 100% sympathetic to all of the problems in this article. I am. Like, I don't want to come across like no, no, no, no. I am 100 because like I fully recognized that we talked about this in the last show. Like I fully recognized that like young people are entering a workforce that I don't envy. Not at all. It is a. It is a. devastatingly difficult time to be a young person in this country. And I think that there's a lot of genuinely righteous anger at the people who've benefited from systems that have made them overall, demographically speaking, so much wealthier than young people are looking at their lives and saying, how am I ever going to achieve anything even remotely close to being independent,

much less having anything like what, you know, that generation had? That's all perfectly legitimate. like I don't the problem is that like until we look at this and take a step back and solve for some of these like major structural economic problems that we've got going on until we do that work and are honest about what that work is going to entail and what it's going to cost and who should pay those costs and we fucking go out and we get our fucking blood from stones because these goddamn oligarchs are the ones who should be funding it people who die you know and no longer need the nest egg that they've saved up, the financial. That they should be, we should fund into the next generation. We have an obligation to do that, like to your earliest point. But like,

instead we're having weird other conversations, I think, by and large, that don't address those things. I think of like the housing problem. And like, there's an enormous amount, and this happens to be my industry, there's an enormous amount of people who are aging into their existing home. And that is a newer phenomenon. So it used to be that people would get a little older and then at some point they would downsize from the family home into something smaller. And like we've built a system that has made it so expensive, so wildly impractical to do that for so many reasons that people are just staying in the family home. That home doesn't go up for sale. That home doesn't churn back into the economy. Less homes on the supply side. Increased the amount of squeeze and

housing costs go up. But like the cost for senior living, for assisted living, for things like that is inordinately expensive. Like to live in like around us, around here, to live in an assisted living community, not even a nursing home, those are more expensive, but an assisted living community. Just a regular studio is over $8,000 a month. Foof, eight grand a month. You got to come up with $96,000 a year. So people aren't going to do that. They're going to try to stay in their existing home. And that's going to drive the cost of housing up because, like I said, it just creates

that negative churn. Like, we've built these impossibilities. They're just impossibilities for everybody on both ends of the spectrum. And, like, both ends of the spectrum are so vulnerable. Older people are so fucking vulnerable. Because, like, when I was broke and you were broke, and we were at the start of our lives, we had this huge runway to fix it. and to work through it.

I was a young guy. I got 50 years to fix this problem. If I'm on the other end and I'm broke, that's how I die now. I just die broke because I'm not, I'm not probably able-bodied in the same way as a 20-year-old. I'm probably not as desirable to employers as a 20-year-old, and I don't have the time.

Because the other thing that money does is it compounds over time. Time is a valuable asset. It's a valuable asset financially. And you've got it at the first. first end of your life and it goes away at the back end of your life. It's already done its work. So, like, these are really vulnerable people. Yeah. I think, I think that boils back down to politics, though. Yeah. I really think it does. Because I think that, that if you put younger people in politics and younger people are able to get elected and older people are in some ways forced out

at a certain point, then the younger person perspective gets its face on the floor. Suddenly, there's a whole constituency behind me as a younger... I'm not a younger person, but let's say I was a younger person.

Let's all dream for a moment about a younger Cecil. There's a younger Cecil. I'm a 35-year-old young Cecil. I go to the house, and I got a whole crew of people who voted me in, who are like me,

who can't get a foothold because they're stuck, now suddenly things can start changing. I start thinking about those things that are on the horizon. We need to have a social safety nut for those people that are there now, but for me later. We need to have that for them. We need to make sure that there's ways in which people can advance in society, can build up that wealth, because I need it too,

because I'm just like all the rest of you. All the other people that are in power, they get to make all these decisions, they all got it all. They've been there for a long time. So they got it all. They don't need anything. So for them...

And they'll get a pension. They're going to get a pension too, man. They're going to get a pension too. So all those people, they got it. So getting those people to not be there anymore is an important thing. And I don't want to sound agist in the sense that, you know, like you shouldn't be there because you're old. I think that there definitely needs to be a different perspective.

I think your age makes. it so you cannot have the same perspective as a young person. You just can't. Your life, my life is immeasurably different than it was when I was in my 20s. Immeasurably different. I can't tell you the number of ways that it is different. It is, it is so much I can't even fathom how different it is. If I were to think, if you were to put me in a time machine to send me back to go live that life, it would be like, it would be like sending someone to prison essentially. It would be such a different life than it is now. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

So you can't put yourself back in those positions. So you can't have the empathy for your younger self that you used to. And the road is different now. The road is so much different for a boomer than it was for somebody who was a Gen X, who was a millennial, who's now

a Gen Z. All those roads are so different. They've changed. You know, that's a huge part. I'm glad you brought that up because like the one of the problems of just people. And it's true of everybody, right, is we universalize our own experience. And so we universalize the experience of our growing up, our hardship, what it took to get

from point A to C to D to E. Like, we universalize that and say, this is the path. Other people can follow a similar path. And one, that's inaccurate. Two, it doesn't take into account the way that, to your point, like, the road has changed. I don't know at all what it's like to be a young person. I don't either. to pretend that I do just because I talk to young people that are in my life is untrue, right?

Like, I don't know what it's like at a one-to-one experiential level in exactly the same way. I don't know what it's like to live as a woman. In exactly the same way, I don't know what it's like to live as a black person in exactly the same way I don't know what's like to live, you know, as an Italian person, right? I don't know. I've never lived it. It doesn't matter how many young people I talk to. I'll never represent their experience.

I had a different experience. I grew up in the 70s and 80s. My experience of growing up doesn't match in any really important way the experience my kids have had. So I should not be looking into my past and my experience and saying, ah, I remember what it was like. Here's what I did to solve this problem. Let me put some solutions in place that build on my experience as a young person because that experience is fucking nothing. Yeah. It doesn't even co-relate.

I was thinking about this just in silly ways. But like when I was a young person, the way that I spent my time looks entirely, not a little bit, but entirely different than the way that young people spend their time now. When I was a 17-year-old kid, you know, like 16-year-old kid, before I had a car, let's say, I didn't have a kid. I didn't have a kid. The car is 17 either. But like a lot of people did. But like I was at my friend's houses all the. time where they were at my house. We were on our bikes moving around. We were independently out in the world. There was no such thing as a cell phone. There was no such thing as the internet. Nobody

necessarily knew where you were at any given time unless you called and told them and maybe you were lying about it. You know, like the whole world in every moment of how we occupied ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally, socially is different. So the idea that I'm going to be like, I can represent you. I know what your experience is like in a world that changes this fast. Yeah. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, it's a very good point. I think about all the different types of ways

in which my life was different. But I think the problem is that I think old people, I'm one included, we fall way too deeply into nostalgia. We lean way too hard on our experiences when those experiences are very

different than the current modern life. It's just very different. It's just not a same thing. Like my experience going to quarter arcades. Yeah, right. Are very different than the kids' experience today. Where they hang out and how they game and how they hang. If they game, whatever it is, you know, like how they date, how they meet people,

all those types of things are so different. So me being an old person in that space to then legislate to those young people, that's a huge problem. And I think conservatism leans on nostalgia way too hard. Yep. and older people lean on nostalgia way too hard. And I think that that's the real issue is that we haven't,

you gotta have that new blood in there. You've got to have young people in there. I just don't think that this person has any answers for it. No, and I guess that's what I was trying to. I know I'm very reactive to this article because I'm like, yeah, those are all great points, man. And like I said, maybe I'm being reactive because I'm aging. And I'm feeling like the pressures of ensuring that I age

in a way that, like, is responsible for my feelings. future, my wife's future. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. Should I sell my house and give it away? Like, I can't do that. Yeah, no. Of course not. Of course not. No. And I don't think that I would push back on anybody who's like, yeah, man, you shouldn't like, you need to give up your fucking everything you own and go walk into the desert like Kung Fu or whatever. Like, I'm not going to do that. Like, that's not, it's not going to happen. I don't, it's like when they get mad at people because they espouse socialist policies, but they also go out to dinner at a nice place once in a while. And you're like, well, like, come on, I got to live in the system. I can't, I can't live outside of the system.

That being said, I don't want to give up going out to dinner. Right. I don't want to tax myself so much that I can't go out to a nice dinner, but I certainly want to get taxed more. I certainly want other people to get taxed more. I want people way more wealthy to me to get way more taxed more. That's what I want. That's what I want to see. Same, man. And I want to see it. I want to seed as. as a person growing into the height of their own political power generationally, I would love to seat it to young people. Yes. Yes. Right? Like I want to be super clear about that. I would like to give away my generational voting block power that I'm coming into. Gosh, if Gen X didn't vote, that'd be amazing. Are you kidding? Fuck us. Go drink from a hose or something. Go tell me how hard you had it.

All right, that's going to wrap it up for our long-form show this week. Remember that you can catch us on Monday for a full show. And we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing, water, downward spiral,

brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night infoduct, Elio Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Preds, all under the handle at DissinancePod. This show is Can Credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617 249-4255 or on their website at creator accountability network.org.