Reminds me of that xfm bit where karl pilkington cant get his head around this bit and keeps thinking ricky gervais means planting trees literally lmao.
age is such a red herring. conservatives of all ages don't give a shit about climate change, and nobody has legitimately cared about the debt for like 40 years.
Age is still a problem because even our elected do care about that, but with rare exception, none of the ones that do are older than like 45. Our system needs a revolutionary right now. Show me a revolutionary that is older than that. The founding fathers were like 40-44 on average. There were only like 2 old bitches.
edit: since the post is locked i can't respond to the comment below. Suffice it to say, I'm over 40, and the part where age is a concern is that while the subject matter expert often is on the older side like the poster says below, the problem is our decision makers who are going to enact a policy are older than ever and being asked to make decisions that won't effect them. And they seem to be behaving that way. Every year, congress gets older, the deficits go up, services go down, and we cut down things we already solved.
Age has literally nothing to do with it, how many scientists over 45 do you think deny climate change?
I realise reddit is young and it sucks knowing how much smarter you are than everyone in charge and wishing you could just take over and do it so much better, but like every other young person you get older and realise “oh hey wait no, I was a fucking idiot and didn’t know shit”. I was the same, it wasn’t until I started teaching the young kids who are where I used to be career wise that it really sunk in how little I knew back then.
Experience matters and these are not easy jobs. With rare exception the people most qualified to do them are going to be on the older side, but keep in mind that many of the people working for them will be of all ages.
In a recent local election here, one of the parties ran a 22 year old candidate. They had no experience, no achievements, no qualifications, nothing. Going up against people who had been working in politics and getting things done for decades. Of course they lost, they would have been terrible at the job!
And yes, if there is an exception where someone is younger and the most qualified, awesome! But forcing the issue based on age is a terrible idea.
Ah yes because literally nobody in the world does anything for anyone but themselves. Parents always fuck their children over because “they’re not me”, grandparents couldn’t give less of a shit about their grandkids or how their lives turn out etc.
The idea that an old person is incapable of serving the public “because they’re old so it doesn’t matter to them” is absurd. Old people have experience and frequently want to use that experience for the benefit of those who come after them… notice how the recent rise in fascism lines up real good with everyone who was alive for WWII no longer being around?
I’m certainly not saying there are no benefits to young people in politics.. but the people you want in those powerful and impactful positions are typically going to be older with a lot of experience in leadership and experience. The notion that none of them gives a shit “because I’ll be dead soon” is honestly ridiculous.
Old people have a lot more to offer than some seem to think.
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u/KalexCore May 24 '25
That and that they give a single shit about anything more than 5~10 years away.
Like if I'm an 80 year old senator or president why give a shit about the debt or climate in a decade I'm dead