This morning brought news of the death of Dianne Feinstein, the California senator whose demise brings to Gavin Newsom’s doorstep the responsibility he has tried so long to avoid. The California governor must now choose a replacement from among his state’s warring factions. Should he choose a black woman? A gay Hispanic? Whomever he picks, he will alienate more people than he appeases.

Senator Feinstein clung to power longer than she was able to exercise it and left no clear successor. Many other figures in our gerontocracy will have a similar legacy.

The obligations that exist between generations were on my mind this week due to a blockbuster report from Bloomberg News showing that 94 percent of new jobs at S&P 100 companies since 2020 have gone to non-white people, only 6 percent to whites. For reasons I explain on this week’s podcast, the headline figure is not quite as bad as it sounds. (History quiz time: Does anybody remember the Workforce 2000 report of 1987?) But it’s still a pretty astonishing demonstration of what all the corporate talk of diversity and inclusion means in practice.

The generational angle is this: To hit their corporate diversity targets, managers have to compensate for whiter-than-average older generations by making their younger generations correspondingly less white. It’s white boomers kicking white millennials off the ladder in order to preserve their own positions.

Après moi, le deluge—Louis XV was in his forties when he said that. Our aged president is much older, and looking at the southern border, he apparently wants to start the deluge before he departs. When the younger generations finally get the chance to step up and take control from the senescent baby boomers, let us hope they take a longer view.