The Average Age and Years Served of Members of US Congress Every Year Since 1789
thesoundingline.com
thesoundingline.com
As I myself have aged, and watched those around me age, I'm really quite struck by just how many people reach 68 or so and spend an inordinate amount of time looking back, fondly, on their prime years. It seems incredibly natural for that sort of nostalgia to arise, as the body decays. I can't help but think it also leads to "back in my day..." style thinking, and the mythical "golden past" to which we need to return.
When you've reached such a mental state, I suspect you're no longer as capable of thinking critically about the future as someone younger, someone who still has a future. You've got no skin in the game anymore, and when that happens you're no longer fit to serve in any decision making capacity. Act as advisor, absolutely. But without skin in the game, you'll do precisely what our gov't has done: mortgage our future for gains today, and completely screw over coming generations.
It's a weak rationale, I admit. Borne of my own biases against the status quo, for sure.
Still I can't help thinking its a good idea. An enforced retirement age for elected officials would be in public interest.
Not to mention, 60 is pretty damn young. You're cutting off people in the prime of their maturity, especially with longer lifespans. Teddy Roosevelt died at 60 and one of his greatest regrets was that he peaked too soon, and that was a century ago
Changing age limits is just a bandage on a bigger wound, which is that US society struggles to produce quality leadership. But that's what dominating the world for a generation will do, it makes you soft.
>Changing age limits is just a bandage on a bigger wound, which is that US society struggles to produce quality leadership. But that's what dominating the world for a generation will do, it makes you soft.
I agree with this, but I'd replace soft with relentlessly selfish. Instead of realizing the need to work together to make something better, they're in it for personal gain.
Please do not use the phrases "simple misreading" or "deliberate attempt to twist words" to describe anyone else
My portrait is pretty objective - please get deported to some other countries so you can find out what living conditions are and what "in it for personal gain" turns into in the rest of the world. Our system is really not that bad, even taking into account the malevolent actors
Is it a lack of quality leaders, or a lack of electing said leaders?
The more I look at the U.S. the more I think it has only a single political problem: the winner-takes-all voting system. With an ability to form coalition governments the two party system would die, and with it many of the decades-long incumbencies.
If your electorate isn't wise enough to kick a bad leader out after 12 years (remember, even today the average term is below 12 years), then maybe that's a problem less with the representative of the voter and more with the voter.
That's the big problem here. Political leadership is pretty miserable, but who is electing them? They're just a reflection of society. Kick them out and it is more of the same.
Proposition 140, an initiative narrowly passed by California voters in November 1990, imposed sharp limits on the terms of California legislators.1 These limits will have a dramatic impact on that legislature as an institution. Internal structures such as leadership, committees, parties, and staff will be weakened or made external. This weakening of legislative structures will force most external players, including interest groups, to expend substantially greater resources for a return diminished in effectiveness and predictability. Put simply, the cost of doing business will increase while the return will decline. This combination is likely to advantage groups with both resources and a stake in state government but to discourage participation, divert efforts elsewhere and encourage cheating by others.
Here's an abstract. This stuff is pretty easily Googleable if you are interested.
Also more newsy:
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/bill-whalen/article31032...
Seats aren’t contested enough because of the massive amount of party support or funding required to beat a sitting person. And we’ve seen how these two parties are corrupted and need to care less about the public opinion now. Less options means less choice for voters to do what you suggest.[1]
Of course I think the real solution to that is election reform with single transferable vote (STV).
[1] though we seem to be seeing some backlash in the past year against this such as with the Justice Dems movement.
Imagine you had a law that no programmer or engineer could work at your company for more than 6 years. You could keep them employed, but they'd have to transfer to a difficult department, like sales or legal. Also your product is over 20 years old. Does this policy sound helpful?
When they say “weakening” that seems like an emotionally overloaded choice picked for cultural resonance.
Is it really a weakening or just a new model to acclimate to and tweak as needed to ensure outcomes?
Why is giving any ground or change always coming along with “we won’t be strong in the same way!” rhetoric
Duh but that doesn’t negate the argument for change given other data over here
We’ve yet to discover a unified theory of reality
I highly doubt our system of social governance has found an equivalent
It has to change. It will change if history is any indicator
Better to have the conversations ourselves then leave it up to experts across the world
However, I do recognize that the looting probably occurs anyway without fear due to the high likelihood of incumbent re-election.
The problem with elected officials is not with age: most of the time their actions are motivated by self-interest (what benefits them or their cast at the end of the day). I would rather want to see complete transparency of their actions/lives/bank accounts and enforce some level of responsibility for everything they do.
You serve one term and then you go home.
(However, I do agree with you that there should still be a maximum age, how you would introduce it - especially to a political system where it would cause almost every elected official to lose out - is beyond me)
Perhaps a system in which a "House of Future", and "House of Past", compete for resources (votes) would help promote a government that was conscious of making investments that support not JUST the aging generation (house of past).
To counter this, these people's life experience is entirely of the 20th century. A world of linear growth and clearly defined national boundaries where information can be controlled. I think because of this that anyone's "experience" is now not only completely irrelevant, but a liability. We live in a whole new world which absolutely no one understands yet, and the only traits which should be desired in a leader are adaptability and the ability to innovate. Something which old people necessarily lack by definition.
You could have made that same statement with justification in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
The hard part of running a country, is not managing technology and ideas, but managing people. While technology may be fast changing, people are much, much slower to change. No matter what the technology landscape, a lifetime of experience in dealing with people will always be helpful.
I'm interested in where you've found the definition of "old people" to necessarily mean a lack of adaptability and innovation.
Where does that definition come from?
Er, no. An earlier spot on the same exponential curve, but there hasn't been a “world of linear growth” in the West since the Industrial Revolution. Maybe, more properly, the preceding Second Agricultural Revolution.
> and clearly defined national boundaries where information can be controlled.
Not really; the breakdown of that feature was recognized and commented on widely throughout the 20th Century, notably in the context of:
(1) the rise of international revolutionary communism,
(2) the rise and increasing dominance of multinational corporations,
(3) the rise of international Islamism
For reference: he's more than quadrupled his investors' money in the years since he turned 60.
It's interesting that the vast majority of Warren's wealth came after he turned 60.
Term limits is a much better solution.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/us/graying-of-america-is-...
But I think your point that old age doesn't make people think about the future is not correct. I don't see a difference in behavior between different generations regarding tax policy, deficits or environment.
There does seem to be a correlation between average age of the congressman and average years served, though. I’m assuming that reflects the life expectancy piece.
Specifically, once you've made it to 40, you're nearly as likely to make 76 then as now. I will try to dig up a source and edit as soon as I find time.
edit: Found a very useful source, though it only weakly corroborates my initial comment. The vast majority of gains in life expectancy have indeed been for infant mortality and early-life infections, but there is still roughly a seven year differential in the life expectancy of of a forty year old:
This indirectly increases the age of members of congress. I agree with what Alex3917 says above, that it has to do with needing to win votes from more and older voters. The graphs in the second half of the article also show that incumbency has increased, because longer living voters will support the familiar name. Then there was a dip in the '70s I assume from a combined factors of many of the older members retiring at the same time there was significant cultural change happening.
Also on the graph of members of the House, there's a sudden rise in age at the start of the 21st century. The Senate graph has no corresponding change. I can only make a wild guess but that would be the amount of money that can be made in the private sector is so much more now that younger people are staying away from public service.
I think it has more to do with the number of constituents per district. You need to be a lot further in your career to win an election with 500,000 voters than one with 20,000 voters.
You can be alive, but not doing very well to the point that you retire or etc.
1. Congress on its own decided that 435 representatives was "enough" and ceased apportionment. Since then representation has diluted from approximately 100000:1 to 1000000:1.
2. We changed the way the Senate was elected, from a majority of each state's legislature, to a popular vote.
The result is that we have effectively created 2 Senates. Winning a majority vote of so many people requires massive funding. Hence, the profound corruption we live in today.
> Winning a majority vote of so many people requires massive funding.
Yeah, well, it's a lot cheaper to buy the votes of a few state legislators, which is why we passed the 17th Amendment in the first place.
A lot of what they intended was incredibly self-serving, at the expense of their subjects.
To play my own devil's advocate, my perception is that the barrier to entry into politics, i.e. money, has risen substantially which prevents younger candidates from even running for office.
Every one of these representatives is there because they got the majority of votes.
Don't stand by but make yourself heard. It happened in the 60s and can happen now.
Basically the hippies got us out of 'Vietnam slightly quicker but they carelessly threw the poor and the non-white under the bus to do it.
Nothing is permanent.
Again, if you look at things with a long enough timespan, nothing is permanent.
Besides that, many changes are permanent. The passenger pigeon will literally never darken the skies again. It's gone, permanently.
We are patiently waiting for the dinosaurs to die out. They will die, and then we will move into their homes.
Or was he warning us?
Work for a lobbying group. Work for a non-profit. Volunteer for an organization that encourages people to vote. Protest. Donate.
There are plenty of things that people can do regardless of their age.
I'd say that's true for the vocal minority of cheerleaders, but I would wager that most people are just voting against other candidates at this point. I.e., the lesser of two evils.
There are many things wrong with short tenures (not that there aren't things wrong with long ones). The main ones include turnover of associated staff who actually know what wheels to grease to get things done. Meanwhile the "figurehead" actual politician has no time to build up political capital with his colleagues.
However, there seems to be a similar wave of fresh-faced, long-sitting senators coming in the early 80s, and I'm not sure what generation that would map to. The "Greatest Generation", perhaps?
I mean, every time, voters basically face the dilemma: "Oh, he voted for stupid policies? Cool. He's also the third most senior member. You can replace him, if you want to start with a new congressman with the least seniority."
I can't help but feel (and I wish I had more data for this) that Congress is doing less and less over time.
What I suspect this would show is that seniority in Congress, at least on a relative comparison basis, has actually not increased. Length of tenure obviously has, but the numbers must be put in the context of their age to be properly interpreted.
My hypothesis is that late stage capitalism has moved the ability to have the resources and freedom to run for office into later years since 1995 as inflation adjusted income stagnates.
Edit: anyone care to explain the downvoting? I clearly marked this as a hypothesis as signficant economic changes have occured during this time frame. I have asserted nothing as fact.
Thanks for taking the time!