No, because that’s literally agism.
I understand that it’s tempting to think that old age necessarily means degraded mental faculties, but there is no scientific link between the two. There are people who develop Alzheimer’s in their 30s, and others who remain lucid into their 100s. Tomorrow there could be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth, and we’d be sitting here with an irrelevant age limit on the books like simpletons. The abilities of the person are what matters, the number itself is a red herring (in the same way that the color of their skin should not be used to infer anything).
If the issue is term length, then put a term limit on the position. Otherwise, democracy means the people will elect the wrong people sometimes. We’re in a unique situation where the baby boomer generation has more voting power than the rest of the population, but this issue will resolve itself.
Edit: the AARP’s position on the matter
Tomorrow there could be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth
Genetic max age in humans is 120 years (±5 years).
Based on telomere degradation. Recent developments may result in human telomere repair in the near future.
Which still leaves genetic degradation and a few more to solve. Aside from living standards, since most don’t reach even 100. But maybe those cases who reach 120 without doing anything special are similiar cases to the super-healers of lung tissue, which never get cancer even with 2 packs cigare / day?
Recommend anything to read on the matter? Sounds very interesting, but I’m afraid I may find some dubious material before striking anything good.
Puh, i think this was from some science journal years ago. I think mainly due to telomeres?
Now that you mention it, this may be obsolete already. Someone knows?
Absolutely none of this is true.
- Alzheimer’s is only one specific disease that leads to rapid mental breakdown. There are many forms of senility, all of which including Alzheimer’s become more likely as you get older, which means that
- There is absolutely a strong correlation between age and degraded mental facilities. If I gave you three citations I’d be leaving out hundreds more citations.
- There won’t be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth. There are so many flaws with this idea it’s exhausting just to think about it.
- Mandatory retirement ages are in use all over the place. Judicial appointments have this in place already in 18 states. Executive boards can legally have this rule in place as well. Any situation where old age in a job is a safety issue creates an exception in the form of an unmet bona fide occupational qualification. I would definitely argue that old men who create policy for hundreds of millions of people create a safety risk for those people if they aren’t mentally qualified to do the job.
There is no necessary correlation. Everything you are saying is representative of today, but not universally true. That’s my point.
It would be identical to say that a certain skin color is strongly correlated with high imprisonment and low economic status, so therefore we should ban certain skin tones from running for office. Those correlations may be true today, but there are reasons that have nothing to do with the actual skin color that make it the case. Similarly, there is nothing about the number of times you’ve gone around the sun, or the length of time you’ve been alive that necessitates your cognitive faculties to degrade.
There won’t be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth. There are so many flaws with this idea it’s exhausting just to think about it.
But there will continue to be scientific advancements that extend our life expectancy by a small bit every year, for an indeterminate amount of time. Which is why raw “age” is not a good measurement to use.
The basis for everything I’m saying is that age is a protected class in the US, which is why forced retirement in general is illegal.
Yes, there are many instances where institutions get away with it anyway, but as the AARP puts it:
Numerous scientific and medical studies find no need for this age-based discrimination.
Maybe we just need a mental competency exam of some kind… Like, I think Bernie is still thinking pretty clearly, but Trump, Boebert and Greene? Literally mentally ill… And not just to pick on Republicans; Biden is clearly senile, Clinton is clearly a sociopath
Yes, but agree with most of the other comments here. It should be lowered to 65-67 instead.
65-67 is perfect.
65-67=-2
An innovative idea, but difficult to implement.
😆
I’m in favor of “recall ‘em all”, this rule change could be just the ticket!
60 for retirement, but allowed to sub contact into the party as advisor positions as staff and encouraged to. But no on the floor decision making positions.
That brings back some memories of a former US president. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7FKO5DlV0
And to answer OP question :
spoiler
Yes, more younger politicians. Make retirement age 50. And more diversity as well, less white males.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=Yq7FKO5DlV0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Absolutely. Being senile is a big liability.
I support a mandatory retirement age, but being more than 75 years doesn’t necessarily mean you’re senile.
It’s more about having “skin in the game” It appears that many representatives/senators are creating or upholding laws that immediately benefit them, the companies that support them, and their industries on the whole.
If someone was closer to middle-age, they have enough experience to make good choices while also being young enough for the negative consequences to happen while they are still alive.
Many older reps claim to do it for “generations to come” or “my family.”
We do not need people like Mitch McConnell who genuinely think 600 dollars is this crazy large amount of money you can live comfortably on for years. This is a real argument he has made.
Yes, aside from their senility, our politicians are simply way too out of touch to comprehend the average American’s issues. Spent most of their life in politics with the easiest 6 figure salary (plus bribes) you can have.
Granted politicians will probably remain out of touch but I’d like to imagine it’d be better
Yeah. Hard for them to relate when they all grew into wealth, lived sheltered lives, spend all day doing office work/politics.
Let them live off of 40k a year and see how their demeanor changes.
I really do think term limits are a better solution than a hard age cap. Term limits would help address the age issue, and it would also make “career politician” a less viable career. That’s a bigger problem imo - politicians doing politics for profit, as a career, rather than as a civic duty. That’s a big part of why we have younger Republicans like MTG, Lauren Boebert, JD Vance, etc. whom a hard age cap would not effect for another couple decades at least.
Not an original idea by far, but I was chatting it up with a few friends recently about this and we thought a civic duty term made far more sense (think jury duty). So much needs to be fixed in the process, like the bill riders addons (a horrible scourge to our political system) and lobbyist (scum). But imagine you were picked (randomly) to serve for 3 year stints, with those getting picked for a 2nd and maybe even 3rd term, serving as some Senior politician. Clearly it needs much more thought, but far better potential because you have to participate and accountable.
Before you knock it down, think about the intelligence required here. Boebert is an absolute moron. Bills before the system need to be something the average person can understand (legal verbiage is such a pointless waste and almost unnecessary). You would need to participate in collaboration with others, understand how to be honest and forthcoming with your goals.
We can’t hold Politicians accountable (not the system today) and this could be an answer.
legal verbiage is such a pointless waste and almost unnecessary
Wow. I like the rest of your position, but being precise in language, and understanding what things mean legally is extremely important.
Yeah, I think I’m talking about the purposeful legal jargon used to deceive or be arguable vague and 20 pages long for no reason but to hide that fact. I’m all about precision, but it needs to be something an average person would comprehend if we were to adopt this method.
Ah, the Athenian model.
I think having some kind of required civics course for the random sounds appointees would do well. Legal language exists for reasons that go beyond being deliberately obtuse, so it could still be used to try and reduce ambiguity
Not for House or Senate. Age just isn’t a close enough metric for what you’re trying to fix.
If you’re concerned with age-related decline, vote them out if you see signs of it, or if they would reach whatever age your limit is during the term.
If you’re concerned about longevity in office, use term limits or reform campaign finance such that longevity in office doesn’t grant too high of an incumbent advantage.
SCOTUS, sure. I think Canada has appointments until 75. Does not seem meaningfully different from appointments for life except less randomness on open slots.
75?
Fuck that. Social security retirement age.
Let’s compromise and make it 69.
Maybe don’t bring social security retirement age until it. They already want to raise that. This would just be another excuse to do it.
I mean, as long as we’re dreaming… We need a hell of a lot more representatives. It used to be proportional to population, but it was capped at 435 (in the 1930s?). Way more reps would probably help more parties emerge as well.
That seems like a lot of reps… Do you know of any comparisons with other democracies and their legislatures?
As far as letting parties emerge I think we should have proportional representation / ranked choice voting.
I’d support term limits. Some people are still very sharp at 100. And as recent history shows, people immediately forget lessons learned we learned in WW2 when we (the world) kicked Hitler in the cock.
Plus, as others as said, you have some politicians that are young and as stupid (and dangerous) as they come, wanting us to join the Russians.
No. That’s age discrimination. If you’re concerned that a person could be suffering from mental degradation, require annual testing for it. I know folks in their 90’s who are better critical thinkers than a lot of 20-somethings.
The problem we have is not that a bunch of old people run the country. It’s that a bunch of young people put them there because they were the only real choices they had. Fix the two-party system first by employing ranked-choice voting. That will break the stranglehold that Republicans and Democrats have on the US political system.
So it’s ok to discriminate against young people but not old people?
Where did I ever say that? Age discrimination is age discrimination. Either you’re qualified for the job or not, independent of your age. It seems like OPs question is a one-size-fits-all reaction to the geriatric choices forced upon us by the two party system. The real solution is to open the system up. Ranked-choice voting does that. You don’t have to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating the opposition. You rank your choices. First choice is the person who best represents you. After the votes are tallied, the candidate who gets >50% wins. If nobody achieves that, the candidate with the least votes is removed and the second choice of those who voted for them is used. This process continues until someone achieves the supermajority.
It has the advantage of doing away with the idea that you’re wasting your vote by not voting for the candidate who has the best chance of prevailing against the opposition. If your candidate is removed, your second choice receives your vote. Your vote ALWAYS counts. A side benefit is that we no longer need runoff elections. Everyone’s second (and third and fourth) choices are already taken into account.
No. Doing so would be very short sighted, considering that human life expectancy would be seeing a massive bump in the coming decades.
American life expectancy is going the other way.
Covid has had a huge role in skewing this.
Say the state of readiness of the American healthcare system, their divisive politics and poor education standards might do that to life expectancy. That is not an excuse, every country had covid
Agreed. Although I do not believe this trend will be consistent for the next 4-5 decades. The US will definitely get universal healthcare in at least 2 decades. Making constitutional amendments for such short term issues is short sighted in my opinion.
People who bought a house and went to college for the same price of college nowadays do not know what the world is like today
