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.
I’m not sure age is the problem. It’s greed and corruption.
I would also require anyone RUNNING for an elected office to divest themselves completely of all investments and business ties. Everyone running would get the same campaign funding and that is all they are allowed to use. For anyone elected, base pay would be significantly increased. This would naturally allow more younger candidates to both run and be elected, since you don’t have to be a corrupt, wealthy, ancient subhuman to fund a campaign.
I’m with you on the term limits, too.
As far as divesting, would you be okay with not necessarily liquidating but moving investments into a 3rd party holder?
Basically like "okay this is what you had in an investment fund, now a third party (for sake of argument fidelity) takes over the fund and now fidelity advisers manage it in its entirety until the person is no longer a representative.
The question really being, what kind of divesting do you want? Because straight liquidation could still negatively impact younger candidates, given that the liquidation would remove potential legitimate interest from their portfolio. Meaning that them running could negatively impact their future.
Yeah straight liquidation would be really bad. It should absolutely be a blind trust.
I like that idea… but I’d split the difference. Put your assets into escrow when you run, and it’s liquidated only if you win.
The idea is that public service should be sustainable… maybe even modestly beneficial in it’s own right, and strict term limits prevent it from being milked.
If a multimillionaire puts their assets into holdings and gets it back after their tenure, then the incentive to corruption still exists because they can still make decisions that affect those assets even indirectly. We should not tolerate that as even a possibility.
Not really if they don’t know what the portfolio is composed of, the only way they could definitely positively affect it is if they make decisions good for the whole of the economy.
That’s what I was actually proposing, the politician would transfer complete holding to someone like vanguard and they would diversify the assets in a reasonable way. The politician would not have control over it or even see what stocks are in the account, but still be able to benefit from the country’s economy.
All the politician could see is the valuation of the holdings in the event they do want to liquidate, but again, they wouldn’t directly choose what is being liquidated (because they don’t know what they have)
Age is absolutely the problem. Bickering partisan politics over 40 years led to a division in our country. The millennial conservatives I know are reasonable, the boomers aren’t. Their minds went funny with too much fox news and that’s just the plain facts.
Term limits and an inability to invest would just make it a completely unwanted job for anyone without some significant fallback plan.
“Base pay would be significantly increased.”
Throwing a number out there: $400K/year should be good enough for anyone to both live on and save toward the future, especially over the course of, say, 4 years. I’d even support a $50K/year pension over the course of 8 years after leaving office, just to keep it fair.
The point is: making the job attractive to people who want to actually do the job, and not selfish, rich, corrupt asshats looking to enrich themselves and their fellow “upper crust” cronies.
Retaining any manner of private interest while serving in such a role is, by it’s very nature, inherently corrupt. Always.
Blind trusts exist