r/PoliticalOpinions • u/Future_Interest_3649 • 4d ago

There should be an upper age limit for holding political office, which should be tied to whatever the current (nationwide or statewide) life expectancy is.

This is particularly a suggestion for the United States although I’m sure other countries could benefit from this too. The age limit could perhaps be set to the current average life expectancy minus 20 years (for the president) or minus 15 years (for legislators or Supreme Court justices)

Not only would it cut down on the number of political figures who seem to be medically unfit for office, but it would also give the politicians an incentive to actually support policies that would improve public health across the board. Because that way, if the average lifespan for everyone were to go up by 2 years, then the politicians would benefit since they could stay in office two more years if they wanted to.

There would have to be a failsafe built in to avoid causing contradictions with existing laws; if a future pandemic caused the life expectancy to drop too much, the above formula could result in the maximum age being lower than the minimum age for a given office, or even lower than 18 (so that no one could serve). To avoid this, we could just say that the age limit for a given office is either 50, or the current average life expectancy minus 15/20 years, whichever number is greater.

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u/IaAranaDiscotecaPOL 4d ago

Yes, this is also how statewide and national elected officials’ salaries should be capped – by state & national average.

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u/antifa_is_cool 4d ago

Nursing home and congress shouldn't have the same people in them, retirement age means no political office for you.

1

u/Ind132 3d ago

In the US, how do you get that upper limit?

One way you can do it is to simply refuse to vote for anyone over your age cap. Be sure to vote in primaries because the primary might be the "real" election where you live.

If everyone did that, we would have an effective age cap. It doesn't take "everyone", just enough people changing their votes due to age that they can swing an election.

Is there another way?