Age and the Lure of Class Reductionism (opens in new tab)

Gerontocracy in America has elicited a common refrain from critics: that class, not age, is the real problem. Yet this kind of class reductionism has largely been rejected when it comes to gender and race, and age should be no exception. To understand oligarchic power on a mass scale in America, we must attend to the extensive network of formal and structural advantages that age-based policies confer on tens of millions of people.