Maybe it's time for a change
By AidaLily
@AidaLily (1450)
United States
May 8, 2012 12:52pm CST
I've been thinking recently about how in the US, you have to be at least 35 years of age to be president.
Now, I am one of the few firm believers that people get "set" in their ways around the age of 30 usually 30-35. Which means no matter what they tell you, they usually already some sort of strong opinion about it. I am not talking about social issues like abortion (which is no one's business but the couple or single parent getting it), gay marriage (which will have no affect on anything except maybe boosting the economy by increased sales for caterers, venues, hotels, flights, travel accommodations, whomever decides to marry them, photographers, retail stores due to gift registries, tailors, clothing stores (for tuxedos, dresses, or things), florist, and much more including lawyers for divorces, etc.), and other such issues.
What I am thinking is that perhaps they should lower the age for president to like 25. Most older people expect the money to be there while they are in office. They do. Even when they borrow and spend they expect it to be there because when they were growing up it was there. Looking at Obama and Romney as well as those congress, what would they do if the money suddenly wasn't there anymore.
Perhaps they should ask the candidates, what would you do if you were suddenly penniless? If you only made 7.15/hr, could only get a part time job, and had a family to feed. What if the only full time job you could get had some overtime, but high health care premiums that you couldn't afford along with your apartment and so on.
I think perhaps they should let the younger generation work on fixing things now, so they have something to fall back on. Rather than people who are now "set" in their ways, why not people who still have the minds to change. People who aren't so used to how things are, that they can actually make a difference. People will automatically write off all young people as immature or unable to handle finances when some are much better than people two to three times their age at managing things. Not to mention as I said fresh ideas and another bonus is that they have yet to be bought like the politicians in offices now.
We have all seen how older people have handled the country thus far and each next generation (in a sense) pays for the mistakes of those belonging to the previous ones. Perhaps what America needs is a younger perception of how to handle these issues.
4 responses
@xfahctor (14113)
• Lancaster, New Hampshire
8 May 12
Two things. First, "they" would have to refer to the states, since they are the only ones who can actually amend the constitution. It is a long difficult process (thankfully) and I don't think changing the age of eligibility is really a significant enough issue to warrant such a process.
Second, I will agree to some degree in principal, the age should be changed....to about 60. We have enough trouble with older presidents, the last thing we need is a bunch of kids running the show. After a certain age, one becomes "set" because life experience has made you so. You become "set" because reality and the ways of the world have given you a hard core education. What you become set in is reality, not the idealism one holds in their youth. One must govern on reality, not idealism.
@AidaLily (1450)
• United States
8 May 12
More older people hold more idealism than younger people. Currently in America people are getting ready to vote for presidential candidates but its nothing more than a smoke and mirror puppet show.
The older people become "set" in their ways to the point of being unable to change or fix things. As I mentioned in an earlier response, younger people are able to change things. Most of the older people are thinking back to times when things "seemed" to work and then saying that it should work again when it had failed. They only know the past in an ever changing world which means their reality is based on the past and not the present.
I am not talking about people at age 18, fresh out of high school but mid to late 20s.
Your statement about a "bunch of kids" proves why nothing will ever get done. Everyone older person has it "set" in their mind that people can't mature until they are their age because it took them that long to mature themselves or because they are worried about the "what if" of not having as much respect, power, control, etc since now a younger person has the means to change things.
The proof of older people messing things up and not quite getting it due to their own life experiences and now too "set" in their ways to see anything but their experiences is evident in many countries I am sure including America. No one has any new ideas and no one has any clear plan because based on their lives things weren't this bad and they can't understand why it fails now because it didn't seem to when they were growing up and living.
@xfahctor (14113)
• Lancaster, New Hampshire
8 May 12
I consider someone in their mid 20's to still be a "kid". I have met mature kids, but they still lack the long term life experience to make the enormous decisions required for governing a nation. What you get when you have a bunch of ideological youths taking over and running a nation, are things like the communist revolution in Russia. You get things like the Islamic revolution in Iran. The list of examples is long and I could fill this page with it.
There is a vast difference between being ideological and a realist. Are there ideological older people? Sure, age is not always a guaranty of common sense. But for the most part, an older person's ideology is based on long time life experience...so it is quite different from what someone much younger believes the way things are.
@petersum (4522)
• United States
8 May 12
It has often been said that politicians should be less than 12 years old - still innocent but not corrupted! And many variations on that theme have been discussed for decades.
Politicians become politicians after discovering that they are useless at any other occupation. Thus they do have a little age related wisdom!
Yes there should be change, all over the world, but it isn't going to happen unless there is an age related virus.
@AidaLily (1450)
• United States
8 May 12
Well, I doubt there would ever be an age related virus, but its getting kind of tiring here and I am sure in many other countries of all the corruption in politics.
While the older politicians have a little age related wisdom, but they rarely use it.
They also have age related stubbornness and inflexibility to the changing times since most don't take the time to fully understand them. Which means most politicians get into some sort of office and work to "fix" the economy but no one has any new ideas. They are thinking back and saying 'well back then this seemed to work' and ignoring that it either didn't work or things are different now.
I wonder if people would wake up in more free speaking places if a group of younger people got together and brainstormed on ways to not only fix the economy but ensure things were running a bit more smoothly with their newer ideas and then placed them against the tried and failed country policies set by older people.
I say they should be less than 8 years old though 12 gives them a little more time to work.
@grandpa_lash (5225)
• Australia
10 May 12
Aida, I am 68 and only three years ago completed a late starter PhD in Anthropology. I specialised in economic and environmental anthropology, and along the way found a number of older academics whose ideas, I think, clearly fit your flexibility ideal (Herman Daly and Kirkpatrick Sale just to name a couple). The problem is not that older people all get set in their ways/opinions/ideals, it's that those who are flexible and innovative are regarded with suspicion by their fellows and don't find their way into positions where they could actually make any changes because the "club" won't let them in. You only have to look at the stink when Joseph Stiglitz (ex World Bank VP, Harvard Professor of economics, Nobel Prize winner, economic advisor to the Clinton administration)came out with his criticisms of the IMF and American manipulation of the GATT treaty ("Globalization and Its Discontents".) He was branded a traitor to his class.
I have no doubt that there are many younger people quite capable of doing a good job in politics, but from my memories of my own "arrogange of youth" I am a little apprehensive about their individual ability to avoid rash decisions made in the name of "fresh ideas". As a Green I am a firm believer in the Precautionary Principle; the difficulty is in finding the narrow line between freshness and caution.
Lash
@knoodleknight18 (917)
• United States
9 May 12
I think the only real change that needs to happens is the one that's pretty much impossible. The cost of running for president. No president no matter how "middle class" they think they were growing up. Has ever had to deal with and mature from a lot of issues. Having you're utilities cut off, having to eat on a very strict budget, having to walk because you can't afford gas. Those are life experiences, having to decide which golf club is better or limiting your kids new car to $50,000 isn't a life experience. We expect people who's expendable income each month is more than most people make to get us through a rough time. The average household income comes out to about $3,200/mo take home in this country and I guarantee you that not a single person in congress could live on that for a year. Yet we expect them to make the hard financial decisions that a person living on minimum wage has to make.
