91–100 of 103 posts
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If someone is doing a good job why wouldn’t we want to keep them around? If a 30 year old is elected to congress I don’t see why they couldn’t serve for 40 years if they are competent.
The problem comes when that now 70 year old is supposed to foster an urgent and relevant response to problems of the current 30 year old generation. They may be a well respected leader with an impeccable service record, but how can they possibly be effective when they don’t know how to use a smartphone or think cookies refer to the things they in the jar in the kitchen, or think AI is that thing that calls you Dave?
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Do you also find the two term limit for presidents weird then?
Term limits are excellent because they avoid career politicians getting too comfortable and corrupt. It has nothing to do with age.
81 is still too high. Should make it a max of 60.
CEOs of large companies really run the US, people working for them tend to write the laws plus they really decide who gets to run via contributions. Most people would call them contributions, but Citizens United changed that.
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> The issue is not electing people... it's re-election advantage. The fix for that isn't age limits, it's term limits. Which would also help with many other issues that are caused by politics being a lucrative career.
After seeing how term limits work in the California state legislature, I stopped being a fan of them. The first (small) problem is that it caused unneeded intra-party drama. Effective assembly members would end up forced to seek a "promotion" into the state senate if they wanted to stay in politics. This often meant challenging members of the same party. This ends with people constantly fighting their "allies" to scr…
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The problem is real voters don't really determine who to elect. If they did, Biden and Trump would both not be candidates.
They were selected in primaries. Who did that selection if not “real voters”?
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They were selected in primaries. Who did that selection if not “real voters”?
I don't know a single person who wanted Biden as the democrat candidate. He only won because the other dudes on the ballot are some nobodys that nobody knows. Do you even know who they are without looking? It's almost like it's rigged from the inside with some nobodys just so that Biden wins.
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The problem comes when that now 70 year old is supposed to foster an urgent and relevant response to problems of the current 30 year old generation. They may be a well respected leader with an impeccable service record, but how can they possibly be effective when they don’t know how to use a smartphone or think cookies refer to the things they in the jar in the kitchen, or think AI is that thing that calls you Dave?
Europe doesn't have term limits and have much younger leaders than USA, so term limits seem to increase the age not decrease it.
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Doesn't matter if it's rare, it's a bad law if it restricts people arbitrarily. Just do term limits.
It’s a mix of issues with both incumbency and health episodes that come with old age. In practice the legislatures do not sufficiently police the health of their members and remove them if they are in poor health and unfit to serve; and four to six years can be quite a long time for health issues to emerge.
But there are people that are plenty sharp well into their 80s, 90s. Benjamin Franklin was in office until he was 82. You look at someone like Warren Buffett as a more famous example of someone that is plenty sharp well into their 80s.
People age at different rates, and there's really no telling what sort of advances in medicine might improve this and extend life and healthspan by decades.
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So don’t vote for young candidates then? Why do you need these limits?
It’s not strictly necessary. And Congress has seated people younger than the minimum on several occasions. So in practice it doesn’t have much effect.