Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
I’m 62, which is embarrassingly old to be effing around on the fediverse.
But I just want to say these octogenarians can’t possibly represent me.
It’s partly their age.
But to me wealth is the more corrupting factor. Some of these people have never had a real job, or at least in decades.
I’m both hoping to work until I’m 70 or die sooner.
These rich assholes can’t represent anyone except other rich assholes.
Yeah I’m realizing the fediverse feels so homey because it seems dominated by people old enough to remember the internet of the 90s, the ones that knew AOL was not the entire internet or even ‘web’ proper. We’re already acclimated to an internet where ‘discoverability’ took a little more elbow grease.
I actually had to read books to learn about computers and start using BBSs. Thankfully, my mom supported my reference manual habit 100% since we only traveled to a city that had a book store every few months.
What’s happening now does remind me of the early days of the net. I didn’t have 80 s access like darpa.
I first got Internet access in the early 90s at work.
There was this incredible sense of hope. And then the Nigerian prince scams and all that crap started happening.
It’s a great resource. But yes, elbow grease is not optional.
I am in my thirties and see the decisions these people are making will ensure that I never get to “retire”. It partly their age but mostly their wealth, does Glitchy Mitch have to worry about money, fuck no. You be be sure that he is going to horde all the wealth he can and do his best to look like the Pale man from Pans Labyrinth
I will never understand the people who have enough money for thirty lifetimes but not only keep working, but keep working a job that involves being a full time piece of shit.
I can understand people who love their jobs holding on, which makes me think they love being pieces of shit more than spending more time with their families and pursuing passion projects.
Most people under thirty are facing their “retirement” being two weeks of palliative care that wipes out their savings but there’s 80 year olds out there dragging their bodies out or bed each day to try and take even more.
You’re welcome here!
I agree, I’d rather see the wealth divestments, gift disclosures…
Maybe this age thing is actually a cop-out and is just a lead up to trying to change the voter age. I don’t support it.
I’m 62, which is embarrassingly old to be effing around on the fediverse.
stop talking shit about @FReddit@lemmy.world 😠
I had some kind of random ten years’ of good health through my fifties. Then it all came to a stop like a train wreck – pneumonia, Covid, chemotherapy. And somehow I ended up type 2 diabetic.
Doh!
I don’t understand why there aren’t term limits across the board either. Some Congress wo/men have been there for decades ffs!
Definitely. Age limits are difficult. Some people lose it early. Some never do.
Two terms and you’re out seems to me to mostly resolve this.
You can even make it just two consecutive terms. I think I’m largely fine with that. At least it’s better than the alternative.
Also, lifetime appointment. That was designed at a different time. Scotus should be a (reasonably long) single term. Then you’re done with the federal judicial system.
Yes, can’t endorse this enough. Judicial appointments need a term limit, no matter the position. Maybe 10 years maximum.
In 1789, the average lifespan for a Supreme Court justice was 67 years. By 1975, that expectancy had risen to 82 years.
Just let agelimits apply to judges as well and make judges appoint judges while you’re at it to minimize the politicizing of the bench.
Looking at the way the current SCOTUS is, the last thing I’d want is Justices appointing their replacements.
Yes! Term limits are the answer, not age limits. It’s effectively the same thing but protects us in two ways (instead of just one: ie age) and does so without the slippery slope that an age limit would entail.
He means that people have different rates of cognitive decline than others, so if you like this 70 year old politician and he’s great, why not?
I think that’s ridiculous. Term AND age limits would make much brighter futures. We should be electing officials that will have to live under the shade of the trees they planted, which is not the case for most US politicians today.
Considering a lower age limit would have to be put in place by existing politicians, that particular slope is not slippery at all. And slippery-slope arguments are categorically invalid except when you can point to a specific reason why doing something will make it likely to be done in excess.
I think testing for cognitive function is going to prove impossibly difficult - or at least for now. How do we set and quantify an acceptable value for cognitive function? How will we execute testing? When do we test? How often? Who will do the testing? How do we counter for potential performance drugs for test candidates? Do we notify the public on the test findings? There’s just a lot involved with making this the barrier to entry vs age or term limits.
Yeah I was wrestling with this in the same way. It’s too hard. That’s not even mentioning that cognitive function or mental acuity isn’t really a straight or constant line. You could test someone who’s off in outer space most days but you test them on the right day they’d ace any cognitive test you put in front of them.
So you advocate your style of politics with lifetime appointments? Certainly nothing authoritarian to see here
They’re saying that politicians like AOC, Katie Porter, Sanders, etc. are high quality public servants, and that high quality public servants should be able to be elected as long as they have cognitive function.
On one hand, in a hypothetical and ideal scenario, that would be nice to have for us voters.
On the other hand, even if an elected official does great work and has a great track record, should they be able to just serve indefinitely until their brain gives out? There’d be a lot of potential problems such as having entrenched and corruptible political operators, even if they started out good, who prevent “fresh blood” from entering politics. It’d be neat to see a study comparing different countries and political systems where there are age barriers and term limits vs those that don’t have them.
There didn’t used to be but after FDR hit 4 terms in a row, they passed the 22nd Amendment in 1947, it was ratified in 1951.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I think the idea in the Senate is that those people would have been seasoned bureaucrats who were intimately familiar with law - lawyers in particular. The House was more the everyday man representing the people of his district.
Now that we vote for senators, too, I’m not sure what role they really play. I’d also add that we need to remove the cap on headcount in the house. I did the napkin math once and we should have something like 2.5x the representatives we have now, IIRC.
I used to feel this way about Career Politicians but they actually have the opposite problem in some other countries. Politicians having personal businesses makes it very, very easy to bribe them.
You don’t understand why the people who vote on various things won’t vote against themselves?? I’m guessing it’s the same reason why voting on pay raises for themselves always pass.
voting on pay raises for themselves always pass.
The only votes congress has taken regarding their own pay is voting to deny a raise. Every year Congress is set to get an automatic COLA raise, u less they refuse it via vote it automatically kicks in. Those are the votes congress has been conducting. They have voted in pay raises for congressional staff members.
I think term limits would be 90% effective. That and fixing gerrymandered districts. How many of those old folks in the House have been cruising to easy reelection due to rigged voting districts? Limit the House to 5 terms and the Senate to 2 terms. That’s a maximum of 22 years someone could be a federal elected politician excluding the presidency. That’s more than enough time to leave their mark on the country.
Term limits, no gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, and more than two political parties.
I think no gerrymandering would absolutely nuke the red presence. Honestly looking at how bad the district maps are it’s insane it’s even gotten that far.
The only way to eliminate gerrymandering is to eliminate geographically-defined congressional districts.
I think we should empanel our congressional delegation in statewide elections. I also think we shouldn’t have 435 votes in the house. I think we should have one vote for each person in the country. I think each representative should cast one vote for each actual person they represent.
Term limits, no gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, and more than two political parties.
We already have more than two parties, its just almost nobody votes for them. With rank choice voting they’ll be more visible than they are today.
The problem with no gerrymandering is that it’s actively hard to enforce without false positives
Everything is hard if you’re trying to do it right, especially large scale. Babies with crayons draw better maps than what happened/is happening in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, etc.
I think term limits on the presidency meant that Trump ran against Clinton instead of Obama.
Obama was more popular than Clinton.
I would have rather had a third term of Obama than what we got with Trump, and I think term limits for the presidency were a shortsighted mistake.
The issue with enacting a mandatory age limit in a democratically elected government is essentially conceding to the idea that the voters are unable to determine for themselves whether an elected official is competent, or not. This has substantial, and serious implications.
You mean like how most places don’t let you vote before you turn 18 because it is accepted that children have not developed the cognitive ability to make sound decisions in regards to electing officials?
This is a strawman argument. OP was talking about an age limit for elected officials, whereas you are now talking about age restrictions on the voters. Yes, we are both talking about cognitive decline in decision making; however there is a substantial difference between putting an age limit on those who can be in power vs. putting an age limit on those who can decide who is in power.
I think once you get over 80 it is time to step aside and let the world move forward.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but how do we prevent this logic from being used to disenfranchise voters above the max age? If they’re not sharp enough to make decisions in the government, how are they sharp enough to vote?
I see two options, if we’re going to have limits on serving in Congress. One, they maintain the right to vote for the same reason 18 year olds do – they’re legally considered adults, and they deserve a say in matters that affect them, like wars. Two, people above the age can’t vote, but no law which passes can affect their day to day. They wouldn’t need to pay taxes, social security and Medicare payments would be guaranteed to not go down for them, and they generally aren’t held as autonomous adults in legal matters.
This is a can of worms, and needs to be carefully handled.
There are plenty of perfectly capable and intelligent people until the day they die. People are individuals not the average of their demography.
For me, the main issue isn’t the increased risk of cognitive decline, it’s the fact that I share very few life experiences with people born before the invention of color tv, and someone who has another 5-15 years left will be less impacted by policy decisions than someone who’s going to be around for another 50-60 years. Octogenarians are not representative of the majority of the population and, in a representative democracy, I think that is important consideration.
We already have restrictions on other government jobs about how old you can be. And we also have term limits on the office of the President.
It’s not breaking new ground or saying anything new that Congress and other elected officials should not be able to serve in excess of 10 years.
We already have restrictions on other government jobs about how old you can be.
For the sake of clarity, are you referring to the minimum age limits of U.S. government officials?
It’s not breaking new ground or saying anything new that Congress and other elected officials should not be able to serve in excess of 10 years.
My argument isn’t that it should be avoided because of it’s novelty, I’m saying that, in order to justify such rules, one must be of the belief that the voters are unable to determine the competency of who they elect. Given that a democracy is founded upon the idea of a government ruled by, of, and for the people, it is of paramount importance that the people be able to make such decisions for themselves.
The same logic that a person can’t serve in an office until they are a specific age is just a valid reason they can’t serve over a certain age. If constituents are supposed to be trusted in determining the competency of who they want to elect there should be no age limits at all.
President has a 2 term limit, so there is no reason Congress or Justices should not also be subject to predefined limits to how often they can hold an office, to say nothing of other elected officials down the line.
There’s already a lower age limit though, so they can determine that anyone under the age of 35 is definitely not competent, but when it gets to people of older age is when it turns into an issue?
My argument is based on principle; therefore, it would be in opposition to any such restriction whose purpose is to “ensure” the competency of the candidate; however, it should be noted that there is a difference between such a restriction based on competency, and another based on, for lack of a better term, trustworthiness, e.g. a natural born citizen clause (this is not an argument for, or against the natural born citizen clause, I’m simply outlining the scope of my previous statement).
And yet we have minimum age requirements. Why does your bullshit argument about voter autonomy not apply there?
Why do you assume people like minimum age requirements either?
The Constitution is difficult to change. I’d get rid of the “natural born citizen” bit too.
You’re right, America would totally be better if we let preteens and foreign assets hold major legislative seats, totally wise outlook you’ve got on the topic here 🤡
Out of curiosity, what is your justification for removing a natural born citizen clause?
In my opinion, you’re too naive to participate in this conversation constructively.
Given we have elected officials that are literally freezing while talking to reporters and yet would probably still win election after election? I don’t think the public cares if they are competent. They just care that their party symbol is next to their name so they vote for them.
Will that really change if we added age limits? They’ll just pick a successor and people will mindlessly vote for the new candidate instead.
We all know the Bidens, McConnells, Pelosi’s, etc aren’t really a single person. They have a whole team of people behind them who are making the decisions, doing the research, etc. You’re not really voting for the person as much as the administration that comes with that person.
For example a lot of people that were part of the Obama administration are part of the Biden. The person changed but the power structure more or less remains the same.
It would be a step in the right direction.
Something doesn’t need to be perfect to be better than we have today.
If we have a minimum age, we can have a maximum.
The question does still remain whether the public not caring about the competency level of a specific elected official is grounds to restrict their voter autonomy. An argument could certainly be made that voting in a less competent candidate could be a strategic move.
Reasonable restrictions can and should be made. You cannot elect a baby, you cannot elect a rock, you shouldn’t be electing someone who clearly isn’t medically capable of doing their job anymore.
Yeah. What if one of the Dunedain came out from the shadows with the sword that was reforged and ran for President? What then?
He was in love with an elf (Arawen) that was thousands of years old. Eowyn is not Aragon’s love interest. She had a crush on him and he rejected her.
Obviously people are picking incompetent election officials since we have quite a few, when you are given choices the selection of choices is important too. People are being given limited bad choices and choosing the lesser of evils. We have too many of these old timers who spend their days sleeping through important decisions or/and just being led by others.
People are being given limited bad choices and choosing the lesser of evils.
What’s interesting about this statement is that I interperet it as saying that the candidates that the voters are considering are pre-chosen by some independent third party that the voters have no control over. I would argue that, as it currently stands, in the U.S.A, for example, there is no such gatekeeper – the DNC or, GOP are not gatekeepers as the voters could choose to simply ignore them, and vote for an independent; however, from what I can tell, the issue certainly seems to be that the general public thinks that they only have two choices so they vote accordingly. This is quite possibly a symptom of the FPTP voting system, but I am not knowledgeable enough on the matter to say conclusively.
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You’re overthinking it. Babies can’t run for office and that’s a good thing.
I would argue, with a rather high degree of confidence, that this would never occur. If it did, it would certainly indicate a complete degredation in the core functions of the government, as well as the trust that the public has in its operation – I suspect that a revolution would be imminent. Furthermore, due its unstable nature, I would wager that it would be rather fleeting.
they shouldn’t even be driving a car. statistics show that for every year over 70 is similar as a year under 20 for drivers. so a 75 year old drives like a 15 year old. and a 90 year old is a newborn?
Enforce more common driving tests as you get older.
Everybody ages differently. It’s like saying that men shouldn’t drive until 25 because of their statistical probability to drive recklessly. Or that black teens should be pulled over more often because they get arrested for drug possession more often.
I’m surprised at the broad support for ageist policies on Lemmy. I figured a leftist space would be more principled.
I understand a lot of people are tired of old politicians but it doesn’t mean we need to start discriminating. I’ve met people who are quick and with it well into their 80s.
I’ve also met people who are near-zombies by 68
It varies by the individual - so why don’t we judge people on their individual characteristics instead of groups they happen to fall into? Race, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, disability, etc.
because seniors currently have all the political power in the US, they shoot down that smart idea.
Florida, the state with one of the highest rates of old people, does have some laws.
Normally you get your license renewed and it lasts 8 years. After 80 it lasts 6 years. Normally you can renew your license online by just clicking a button and paying a fee. But after 80 you need to come into the DMV and do a vision test.
I think the tests could be a little more broad, and perhaps start a little earlier like at 75. So for example after 75 you need to renew your license every 3 years or something and must always do a vision test (and maybe even a driving test)
I’m sure other states have similar rules, I doubt Florida is leading the country on anything
