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Would you support a mandatory retirement age of 75 for US House, US Senate & US Supreme Court Justices and if not why? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by robocall@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Absolutely none of this is true.

Alzheimer's is only one specific disease that leads to rapid mental breakdown. There are many forms of senility, all of which including Alzheimer's become more likely as you get older, which means that
There is absolutely a strong correlation between age and degraded mental facilities. If I gave you three citations I'd be leaving out hundreds more citations.
There won't be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth. There are so many flaws with this idea it's exhausting just to think about it.
Mandatory retirement ages are in use all over the place. Judicial appointments have this in place already in 18 states. Executive boards can legally have this rule in place as well. Any situation where old age in a job is a safety issue creates an exception in the form of an unmet bona fide occupational qualification. I would definitely argue that old men who create policy for hundreds of millions of people create a safety risk for those people if they aren't mentally qualified to do the job.

[–] Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

Maybe we just need a mental competency exam of some kind... Like, I think Bernie is still thinking pretty clearly, but Trump, Boebert and Greene? Literally mentally ill... And not just to pick on Republicans; Biden is clearly senile, Clinton is clearly a sociopath

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 months ago

There is no necessary correlation. Everything you are saying is representative of today, but not universally true. That's my point.

It would be identical to say that a certain skin color is strongly correlated with high imprisonment and low economic status, so therefore we should ban certain skin tones from running for office. Those correlations may be true today, but there are reasons that have nothing to do with the actual skin color that make it the case. Similarly, there is nothing about the number of times you've gone around the sun, or the length of time you've been alive that necessitates your cognitive faculties to degrade.

There won't be a scientific breakthrough that doubles the average lifespan of every human on earth. There are so many flaws with this idea it's exhausting just to think about it.

But there will continue to be scientific advancements that extend our life expectancy by a small bit every year, for an indeterminate amount of time. Which is why raw "age" is not a good measurement to use.

The basis for everything I'm saying is that age is a protected class in the US, which is why forced retirement in general is illegal.

Yes, there are many instances where institutions get away with it anyway, but as the AARP puts it:

Numerous scientific and medical studies find no need for this age-based discrimination.