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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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politics
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We need to stop allowing folks to remain in power after the age of like 65.
I am in favour of both age and term limits for politicians. For one, if regular people are supposed to retire at 65ish and realistically often struggle to find work once they go past their 40s, there is no reason why politicians should be allowed to stay in their jobs through their 70s and sometimes 80s.
And I am in favour of term limits because it would keep the career politicians out of the game. Very few of them are any good.
Politicians who know that their political career is about to end have the nasty habit of doing favors for their big corporation of choice, knowing that they'll receive a cushy board position in return afterwards.
If you want to establish term limits, you also need to establish some sort of accountability for the time afterwards.
Accountability is needed with or without term limits. Too many politicians are deep in the pockets of big businesses. "Professional board member" is already one of the most popular sinecures for spent politicians. Term limits aren't a silver bullet for general politician misconduct. Everything needs checks and balances, and politics has way too little of it.
I agree that we need younger people in these positions. We need those more in touch with what the average person is going through these days.
However, I disagree that we should set a hard age limit. If anything have them take some sort of cognitive exam every few years once they hit a certain age.
You need an impartial hard limit. Otherwise you get people like trump getting doctors to lie about their health. Sorry if you’re in good health and get the boot, but you knew what the limits were when you signed on.
Makes sense. Perhaps it could be something variable based on the average lifespan of the people in the country... it might even give them a little incentive to come up with a working healthcare system if it means they get to stay in office a little longer.
That’s a good idea. But cynical me says people in power like to keep that power, and they’d manipulate and restrict what data they used to calculate that average as it applies to their tenure.
True, but you can only fudge the numbers so much. And it would help to keep things in check if medical advancements are made in a way that only allows the rich to have a drastically longer lifespans.
You'd really want a hard number right around 65-70. People by that age have some level of cognitive decline, there's evidence that around 50 is where it starts going down.
Right, what I mean by "based on the lifespan of the people" would be more of a percentage... not the full expected average lifespan.
So, for example, it could be 80% of the average life expectancy in the U.S. which looks to be around 76, so that would put the cap around 61.
But perhaps we could base it on studies of cognitive decline instead. If some future medicine is discovered (that most people have access to) which would allow everyone to continue functioning well at an older age, then I don't have a problem if the average person is still doing well at an older age. In this case we could use some percentage of the average age of cognitive decline instead.
A cognitive exam would be a good idea regardless of any age. They need to be fit to serve.