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.
Let’s do it slightly differently, let’s make the mandatory retirement age for political office the median life expectancy age for the entire country. If the politicians, etc can manage to make everyone live longer, they can hold office longer.
Similarly, take away their separate and different medical coverage and put them on the same Medicare system everyone else in the country has to use.
Make it 75% the median life expectancy and it’s a deal.
I think they should also be paid using their state’s disability/unemployment system and get food through their state’s EBT system.
And have to live in section 8 housing while in DC
Yes I’d like to vote for your policies
Oh hell yeah.
Force them to use the public option. Make a law to specifically disallow all congresspersons from enrolling in private insurance for as long as they hold office. Violation of that restriction is immediate ejection from the relevant legislative chamber.
We would have single payer by next Tuesday.
I agree with this take, especially since us younger people are going to be the anti-aging-drug guinea pigs.
First I would support campaign finance reform and watch 90% of the problems be solved.
Then I would tackle the other 10% by making voting more accessible - especially in primaries. Make it so accessible that even young voters bother to do it. That way people will choose younger reps more often.
So no, I wouldn’t support putting a bandaid on one issue and ignoring the root causes.
Should make voting a week long thing so people have more time to go. The last day should be a national holiday.
75?
Fuck that. Social security retirement age.
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.
Let’s compromise and make it 69.
Not just no, hell no.
People like to think that the seventies is when you automatically lose your ability to think and do anything useful. That’s bullshit; it’s individual, genetics combined with access to good nutrition, healthcare, etc.
I used to work as a nurse’s assistant, specifically in home health where the patients were often at home with spouses, and other age peers. I had patients as old as their 90s that could still function mentally just fine, but had physical issues. I had patients older than that too, several just past 100, but they really wouldn’t have been able to be a walmart greeter.
But even with the patients that did suffer cognitive difficulties, there were plenty of family members and friends that didn’t. Most people suffer only minor cognitive decline in their seventies. Given otherwise good health, there’s no necessity for someone without a diagnosis that would prevent them from doing their job to be forced to retire.
What we need are term limits, not ageist bullshit. The problem isn’t age, or even a given political bent, it’s the accumulation of power and influence that then becomes a commodity open for purchase, leading to corruption.
Now, I wouldn’t object to mandatory fitness evaluations, but that’s going to be as corruptible as anything else political. I certainly think some specific diagnoses should exclude someone from making decisions for the entire nation, that affect the entire world, but that’s a tough thing to make happen, much less make work.
But age? Age is absolutely not a factor in fitness for any public office. Hell, I’m of the mind that none of the elected offices should have minimum ages, beyond a national age of adulthood so that the people in the position aren’t immediately beholden to someone like a parent. Pick whatever arbitrary age you want for that, and we’re good to go as long as it passes muster legally.
I agree with the Idea that being in a position for too long increases the possibility of corruption. But, I’ll counter with two thoughts:
1.) Shouldn’t people have the ability to vote for who they want to represent them? If the people of Vermont want to keep on rejecting Bernie Sanders, why should they not be able to? (Valid counterpoint- Dianne Feinstein)
2.) This is the less trivial one - I fear that term limits would invite more corruption, as the representatives understand they only have a limited amount of time to grease as many palms and make as many connections as possible in their limited amount of time in office. We already have issues with the lame duck period, and those are currently measured in weeks. I can only imagine what I’d be like if a large portion of reps had full lame duck sessions.
There are plenty of other things we could do to limit corruption before we rule out term limits for that reason. We could also think about politicians who feel more free to “do the right thing” even when unpopular because they won’t be afraid about winning the next election.
Term limits have been shown to create ‘brain drain’, and ultimately what winds up happening is that that legislators must focus on career growth - either spending their time in office campaigning for the next elected position, or looking to opportunities beyond politics. It takes time and experience to become skilled in crafting bills that don’t have adverse effects and cannot be overturned or lawyered to do things they aren’t intended to do.
The net result is that it creates a slew of amateur legislators, and professional lobbyists, as legislators are forced to retire just as they become skilled at the job.An alternative to a retirement age is mental/physical fitness reviews, but that’s also tricky. If there isn’t a defined process then unscrupulous people will just use a doctor of choice to get the results they want, but if there is a process, politicizing that process to serve one party or the other could mean using mandatory retirement to force key vacancies.
I do think that at some point we need to pry the hands of people off the levers of power, and I can’t think of a way that is as ‘non-corruptible’ as a set age limit. It would not always be personally fair, but it would probably be for the greater good.
I’m honestly saddened by how far down I had to scroll to see a post that called this out as blatant agism.
65 is what it should be. They have no fucking clue what most people need.
My parents are close to 65 and completely out of touch. If you turn 65 during your next term you should be ineligible.
If having no clue what most people need is the metric, were eliminating pretty much everyone from consideration.
No, I would support it being locked to the national retirement age though, which would be 67 at the moment.
Wouldn’t that give an extra incentive to raise the retirement age?
That would give politicians another reason to raise the retirement age, in order to stay in power.
Yeah, but probably I’d make it lower (like 67) and allow exceptions with large majority (like a four year exception with a two thirds or three quarters vote of the senate).
I also think Supreme Court justices should have terms and term limits, and shouldn’t be allowed to receive gifts over a certain value (like $2,000).
No; it should be 60.
Lifetime appointments to the supreme court are obviously a mistake; the idea there is to make them secure in their jobs so they don’t have to politik from the bench. It doesn’t account for actually evil people digging in like parasites in the heart of our government. They should serve a single 10 year term, at which point no matter their age they must retire and then serve no further roles ever again. Like, you’re not allowed to go be a senator, or a congressman, or a governor, or a Walmart greeter. You can volunteer to speak to law students, you can retire, or you can die. Minimum punishment for a sitting or former supreme court justice for any crime: jay walking, copyright infringement, speeding, embezzling, mass murder: instant death. The guilty/not guilty verdict is read to your firing squad. The members of our highest court should be nothing less than absolute exemplars of citizenship.
The house and senate should have maximum terms of not ten years each; the senate currently has 6 year terms, that would have to be shortened, possibly to four. Wouldn’t hurt my feelings if we eliminated those mid-election years so we could have some time away from being screamed at by our so-called government. You want a full career in politics? You start at the local or state level, then you run for federal office.
I would make prior office a requirement for President. As far as I’m concerned, you have no business serving as president if you have not already been a senator, congressman, governor, state senator or general assemblyman. I do not believe town council or city mayor should count here because of the low barrier to entry for buying 10 acres of rural land and incorporating it as a town with one resident and electing yourself mayor.
Minimum punishment for a sitting or former supreme court justice for any crime:
instant death.
I like you.
Nah, I don’t think my issue is with age; it’s with lifelong politicians. Introduce term limits.
Age is a huge problem. Older people have way more money and time than the rest of us, and they overwhelmingly campaign and vote for their own age bracket. That’s why so much of our government is run by senior citizens, and so many of those elderly officials hold old-fashioned views. They represent their their self-serving out-of-touch voting base.
Term limits would help - I would support that across-the-board for just about every elected position - but we really need to make sure that the country is run by people young enough to actually care about the long-term consequences of their decisions. As it stands now, more than half of our representatives will be dead before the real-world results of their policies become apparent. That’s not a good dynamic for governing a country of a third of a billion people.
We also need to level the playing field and make early voting universal and make election day a holiday to ensure that wealthy old white people aren’t so much more enfranchised than younger Americans, the working class, and people of color.
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.
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
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.
no. bernie is a great example of why age is no restriction to being a good politician. you people have to stop trying to use goose and gander legislation to stop conservatives. you stop conservatives by STOPPING CONSERVATIVES.
Bernie is the exception, not the rule. Even then, he may have good ideas, but if he ever had the power to realize his ideas, he’d be dead before we could assess if his ideas worked, and then we would move on to the next geriatric leader whose ideas will outlive them in short time.
I want someone with Bernie’s ideas, but I really want this country run by a generation that doesn’t have one foot in the grave.
how old are you?
No I’m for term limits. Each presidential election the popular vote should go to decide the party that gets to nominate the next justice. The first one in has to retire at that same time.
I also think we should increase the size of the court and cycle in/out two every four years - somewhere around where we’d have 20 year term limits. Side bonus, I think it’d be a benefit for all of us that the court has a larger variety of voices and be more difficult to hack the way the GOP has this court.
No.
- I think that 75 is already too old, especially because they won’t let go of their positions until their terms end even after the “mandated” age of retirement (unless the law specifically forbids taking a position you won’t be able to complete)
- Politicians will argue that this age is either too young or too old and will either never update this law, or update it so often it becomes meaningless.
An alternative could be to set the limit to a percentage of average life expectancy, or some other variable, so the law isn’t as easy to ignore or mess with, the law can remain unchanged for decades and remain relevant without adverse effects (hopefully), and politicians are encouraged to improve the quality of life.
I’d support a four-term limit for the Senate, six-term limit for the House, and one term in the Supreme Court for a period of time not to exceed 20 years.
