The US Gerontocracy - should their be an age cap?

[Compassionate Centrist Christians]

I wouldn't say we need an age cap, voters can determine for themselves whether someone is fit.

Yes and if people don’t want that person in office anymore than they can vote them out. Ted Stevens the longest serving Republican senator in US history lost re-election in 2008 in a monumental upset having first been elected in 1968.

I do support term limits though, I just meant in my last post in terms of age discrimination

[San Lumen]

Yes and if people don’t want that person in office anymore than they can vote them out. Ted Stevens the longest serving Republican senator in US history lost re-election in 2008 in a monumental upset having first been elected in 1968.

I do support term limits though, I just meant in my last post in terms of age discrimination

Elections are term limits.

[Ifreann]

Frankly I see no reason anyone over the age of 60 should be involved in politics. There's a disturbing trend of both older politicians and older voters favoring what interests elders at the expense of younger generations. This kind of bias is detrimental to the nation's future. Age does not equal wisdom no matter how many Facebook Boomer memes say otherwise. Hard cap at 60 and no older; after that they have to retire.

I'm very opposed to the idea of establishing a class of people who must obey the government's laws but are banned from influencing those laws.

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Yes. Our president should be like 45, not 78.

Why? Our President is 79 and he's great.

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Call me a class reductionist if you want but it's not age that is responsible for the disconnect between the government and the people, it's class. I'd much rather elect an 80 year old who worked for minimum wage all their life than a 25 year old millionaire.

We don't need age quotas or gender quotas or race quotas in government, we need class quotas. Anyone with a net worth of over 10 million should be permanently disqualified from running unless they give up their wealth to the community they want to represent. At least 20% of Congress should consist of cashiers and fry cooks and janitors, not people who did that as a summer job when they were 17 but people who work those jobs to survive. To make that happen we need publicly funded elections.

Dictatorship of the proletariat, you say?

[San Lumen]

Call me a class reductionist if you want but it's not age that is responsible for the disconnect between the government and the people, it's class. I'd much rather elect an 80 year old who worked for minimum wage all their life than a 25 year old millionaire.

We don't need age quotas or gender quotas or race quotas in government, we need class quotas. Anyone with a net worth of over 10 million should be permanently disqualified from running unless they give up their wealth to the community they want to represent. At least 20% of Congress should consist of cashiers and fry cooks and janitors, not people who did that as a summer job when they were 17 but people who work those jobs to survive. To make that happen we need publicly funded elections.

Publicly funded elections is fine but there should not be quotas for legislatures. Anyone who wants to run who meets the age and residency requirements should be allowed to run. It’s up to those who vote to decide who they want.

[Ifreann]

Call me a class reductionist if you want but it's not age that is responsible for the disconnect between the government and the people, it's class. I'd much rather elect an 80 year old who worked for minimum wage all their life than a 25 year old millionaire.

We don't need age quotas or gender quotas or race quotas in government, we need class quotas. Anyone with a net worth of over 10 million should be permanently disqualified from running unless they give up their wealth to the community they want to represent. At least 20% of Congress should consist of cashiers and fry cooks and janitors, not people who did that as a summer job when they were 17 but people who work those jobs to survive. To make that happen we need publicly funded elections.

Publicly funded elections is fine but there should not be quotas for legislatures. Anyone who wants to run who meets the age and residency requirements should be allowed to run. It’s up to those who vote to decide who they want.

Aren't there rules setting out how many representatives each state gets? Isn't that essentially a quota?

[San Lumen]

Publicly funded elections is fine but there should not be quotas for legislatures. Anyone who wants to run who meets the age and residency requirements should be allowed to run. It’s up to those who vote to decide who they want.

Aren't there rules setting out how many representatives each state gets? Isn't that essentially a quota?

Yes technically but when most people hear quotas in politics they think of seats set aside for certain groups of people such as race or gender.

[Ifreann]

Aren't there rules setting out how many representatives each state gets? Isn't that essentially a quota?

Yes technically but when most people hear quotas in politics they think of seats set aside for certain groups of people such as race or gender.

You mean the things Page explicitly said are not needed?

[San Lumen]

Yes technically but when most people hear quotas in politics they think of seats set aside for certain groups of people such as race or gender.

You mean the things Page explicitly said are not needed?

Yes but they want other types of quotas. if multiple people wish to run for a office that’s what primaries are for.

[Arclandia]

So Joe Biden age 78 is now the eldest President inaugurated in the USA {snip} But should there perhaps be a age cap?

Yes. There should be. It should be 65 years old because that's the age of retirement. Anyone any older than that has had their thoughts pretty well cemented, and they are no longer open to new ideas or ways of thinking. Even Bernie has stopped thinking outside his particular box. He has a great box, a progressive box, a rare one in our politics, but it's pretty firmly set. We probably aren't going to convince him any time before he dies that he should have any kind of "conservative" lean in his ideas. The fact that I happen to agree with Bernie doesn't make that any less of a problem in general in our political field. I feel like it has a lot to do with why Political Apathy and Corruption are so high in the US.

[San Lumen]

So Joe Biden age 78 is now the eldest President inaugurated in the USA {snip} But should there perhaps be a age cap?

Yes. There should be. It should be 65 years old because that's the age of retirement. Anyone any older than that has had their thoughts pretty well cemented, and they are no longer open to new ideas or ways of thinking. Even Bernie has stopped thinking outside his particular box. He has a great box, a progressive box, a rare one in our politics, but it's pretty firmly set. We probably aren't going to convince him any time before he dies that he should have any kind of "conservative" lean in his ideas. The fact that I happen to agree with Bernie doesn't make that any less of a problem in general in our political field. I feel like it has a lot to do with why Political Apathy and Corruption are so high in the US.

So what? It should be up to the voters who they want in office not some stupid age limit which could be seen as a form of discrimination.

[Wahlid]

Yes, absolutely. I don't want to see GOP bloodbaths in 2022 and 2024, when Rubio or DeSantis challenges Aviators Grandpa Joe for the Iron Throne.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/us/politics/biden-2024-latino-suburban-vote.html

Prominent Political Scientists See 2020 Election as a "Warning" for Democrats, 2022 and 2024 Certain Republican Victories

Analysis points to future problems with Latino, Asian, and upper middle-class suburban voters. Argues youth vote is "unreliable".

By Maggie Haberman
April 1, 2021
Updated 8:46 p.m. ET
LONDON-British and Japanese political scientists who have analyzed the results of the 2020 Presidential Election have declared that they constitute a "pyrrhic victory" for the Democrats despite Biden's election.

Dame Altria Pendragon, a professor of Comparative Politics at Cambridge University, points to the dependence of the Democratic House majority on college-educated suburban whites. "The current divide in the party over bringing back the SALT deduction as part of President Biden's infrastructure bill shows that Democrats are strongly beholden to voters in upper-middle class suburbs from Mission Viejo to Mahwah. Even the party's leaders in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi, are breaking with the White House on this issue." Dr. Pendragon also suggests that with a Latino friendly Republican nominee such as DeSantis in 2024, that there may be further swings toward the Republicans in the Southwest. Arizona, Nevada, and even New Mexico may turn red once more without. "At the end of the day," Pendragon declared, "the Democratic Party is a party in disarray and as a result they have to take a serious look at themselves in the mirror in the coming year to decide what kind of party they want to be."

Professor Hachiman Hikigaya of Waseda University in Tokyo also argues that a reckoning for Democrats may come earlier than thought. "People like to think of young voters as inherently progressive but there is no guarantee that this will be the case. We see in the Seoul mayoral elections in South Korea that younger voters are overwhelmingly rejecting the centre-left Democratic Party in favour of the conservative opposition due to resentment at the rising cost of living. In particular, Latino and blacks youths-especially males-may not be as solid a Democratic voting bloc as their parents and grandparents were. It's not a coincidence that Kanye West became so favourable to Donald Trump."

[-Ocelot-]

Imposing maximum age caps sounds undemocratic to me. Besides, a president isn't alone in governing a country.

[Adamede]

So long as you’re not mentally handicapped in someway, no.

[Varnalaya]

It's not about ages or term limits.

It's about money in politics. Get money out of politics (spending cap!) and you'll see the "usual suspects" start to retire very quickly. They are only kept in place by a small base of equally ancient donors.

[The Jamesian Republic]

No, but I think that one could argue that medical evaluations should be done and if one's mental state has declined past a certain point they are no longer eligible to hold office.

I think we need to set up a committee that processes potential presidential candidates and they determine if they would be good enough to run. Mental state and age would be a key factor same with prior experience in government. If the common worker has to go to a job interview then why shouldn’t potential presidential candidates do it?

[San Lumen]

No, but I think that one could argue that medical evaluations should be done and if one's mental state has declined past a certain point they are no longer eligible to hold office.

I think we need to set up a committee that processes potential presidential candidates and they determine if they would be good enough to run. Mental state and age would be a key factor same with prior experience in government. If the common worker has to go to a job interview then why shouldn’t potential presidential candidates do it?

No. That should not be up to a committee to decide. What's the point of a primary or general election if a committee can decide whose fit to run?

Iran does that with the Guardian Council. It could easily be abused to prevent people one doesn't like from running. That's what happens in Iran.

[Varnalaya]

No, but I think that one could argue that medical evaluations should be done and if one's mental state has declined past a certain point they are no longer eligible to hold office.

I think we need to set up a committee that processes potential presidential candidates and they determine if they would be good enough to run. Mental state and age would be a key factor same with prior experience in government. If the common worker has to go to a job interview then why shouldn’t potential presidential candidates do it?

That job interview is called the General Election.

Pre-selecting the candidates is done in Iran. Not something to be emulated in the USA, I think.

[The Jamesian Republic]

I think we need to set up a committee that processes potential presidential candidates and they determine if they would be good enough to run. Mental state and age would be a key factor same with prior experience in government. If the common worker has to go to a job interview then why shouldn’t potential presidential candidates do it?

That job interview is called the General Election.

Pre-selecting the candidates is done in Iran. Not something to be emulated in the USA, I think.

I did not know that. Yeah we do not need to take after them. I think if people want to announce their intention to run then the parties themselves need to set up a place for them to announce. Not during the National Conventions but a special meeting at least the year the debates start.

[San Lumen]

That job interview is called the General Election.

Pre-selecting the candidates is done in Iran. Not something to be emulated in the USA, I think.

I did not know that. Yeah we do not need to take after them. I think if people want to announce their intention to run then the parties themselves need to set up a place for them to announce. Not during the National Conventions but a special meeting at least the year the debates start.

The convention is when someone is formally nominated not when someone announces their candidacy.

[New Visayan Islands]

Please do not gravedig. Thread locked.

Thanks!
NVI