Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
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.
If a pilot is forced to retire at 65 due to fear of killing a couple hundred, there is absolutely zero reason someone in charge near 400 million shouldn’t have a maximum age cap
Can you elaborate?
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.
Yeah the slippery slope makes no sense. I get that there isn’t a precise date to determine the start of cognitive decline, but why not just put an avery one as a limit in the law then? We do it for expiration dates as well.
If there were age limits it should be well below the point of any cognitive decline, because it’s also about having younger people in power who can think and plan on a scale of several decades, because that’s how long they have left to live.
I’m thinking like 50.
The problem with setting the age limit too low is that people of that age range might not feel represented.
To give an example, I’m 48. One of my upcoming concerns is retirement. Will it be able to afford to retire? Will I need to work part time after “retiring” just to survive?
If every politician in a position of power was too young, retirement might not seem to them to be an important issue. After all, when you’re 30, retirement seems forever away. They could enact policies that are great for people under 40 but devastating to people approaching retirement.
That’s why, while I definitely think politicians like McConnell and Feinstein should have retired long ago, I’m leery about setting too low of a forced retirement age.
Also, you do want people with experience there. Having a rotating door of only young people doesn’t really help anything.
The door wouldn’t be rotating anymore than it is now.
And what’s your source on young people not helping anything? All the times in US history that we made the most progress were under young Democrat presidents.
I didn’t say young people don’t help anything. I said having only new young people all the time doesn’t help. Having people with experience is a good thing.
Do you think JFK had no experience? He became president at 47. Did he “not help”, as you put it?
Your claim is not only vague but has also been presented without any reasoning.
I’m 31 and I’m pretty fuckin concerned with retirement. Because if I’m not now, I’ll probably never be able to.
If we made this change, it would serve as a lever to help increase the age at which we can vote. Which is what these fuckers really want.
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.