Young people don’t know how much they don’t know yet. Old people have name recognition and money. Difficult to trust a young person with name recognition and money because it’s probably because of the Name and not the person’s actions. There’s more old people that can vote than young people who can vote.
It takes a long time to build the connections needed to win elections, both with donors and with people that can help the politician attract voters.
And once a politician gets elected, they often keep getting elected over and over again. So maybe they were elected at a young age, but they’ve been there a long time and now they’re old.
Also, people often spend their 20s getting an education and their 30 and 40s focused on raising a family and earning money. They just don’t have the time and energy to run for office.
Think about it like this, to get elected you have to gain the support of your political party (locally and/or nationally), raise millions of dollars, and put together a campaign consisting of dozen to hundreds of people.
That doesn’t count the other skills like learning about the political system, learning the issues (not just social media talking points), making yourself presentable, learning to talk to an audience, learning to connect with people on an individual level, and so much more.
And once you have all of that, you need to not have a job and have enough free time to dedicate a year of your life to something you might not get.
How many people before 30 have all of that lined up?
There is a minimum age for US Senators, Representatives and POTUS. Unsure about all of the State Senators and Reps, I’m assuming some have an age requirement.
Age usually means experience and though there aren’t really any qualifications for these positions, people vote for experience whether that be other political experience(which keeps most in their positions for a while) or just life experience which means a 40 year old who’s been through what their constituents struggle with every day is likely to get more votes than a 25 year old fresh out of college who has t had to face adversity quite yet.
Also some people tend to vote against their own self interests. Ie broke people voting for an old billionaire who doesn’t understand their struggles.
Two reasons, the first is incumbent advantage, once you get in, you have the name recognition, and you have the funding to run a campaign, plus you can point to basically any pork you managed to secure for your district as an accomplishment. All this means you end up with politicians who have served in their role for a very long time winning many successive elections.
The second addresses why older people tend to get elected in the first place, and that is experience. Simply living longer gives you a broader base of lessons learned to draw from on future decisions. Suppose you have some catastrophic incident requiring a plumber and you get two bids that are about even in pricing. Would you rather have the plumber who is 48 years old with 25 years of experience, or the one who is 26 with 5 years of experience?
You need some sort of life experience to be a plausible candidate. Additionally, it helps if you’ve got some measure of financial independence because running for office while you’re working a full time job is difficult. If we’re discussing federal office, many politicians start in state politics, and it takes years of working there before they’re getting the experience and donor support to be realistic candidates for higher office. Lastly, the US Senate in particular rewards seniority with power, so you see lots of extremely old people there.
Corporations spend a lot of money on these people. Once they have them properly trained find some sympathetic to their cause and have turned them into controllable predictable entities they have little desire to find new ones.
… because you don’t just run for Senate. First you run for dog-catcher. Then you get a little higher and become a school trustee. Then, after a few steps, maybe a state representative. All that takes time. Years. Then, eventually they run for governor or US rep, or Senator. And fail. Then run again. Fail. Then finally, maybe, win. They are like 50 at that time if they’re lucky.
Because, unlike other countries, where the number of politicians is proportional to the population, the number of politicians in the US is fixed, no matter how large the population grows. There are 2 Senators per state, and 435 members of the House of Representatives. The number of Representatives was fixed in 1929. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-house-got-stuck-at-435-seats/
So if the old ones don’t retire, the young ones can’t get in.
This is quite undemocratic, actually. It’s one representative for every 786k people. Germany, on the other hand, has 133k people per Bundestag member. One of the most democratic nations in the world, Iceland, has 389k people, and 63 members in its national legislature, for a ratio of 6,181 people per legislator. That’s much more democratic!
Most of the oldest (most notably US senate) have been being elected for a hella long time as well. Good old Chuck Grassly is the oldest at 90, he is also the longest serving. He was a reasonable 42 when elected the first time. At some point they keep getting elected ,because people just default to “i know that name,been hearing it my whole life, my grandparents, parents and now me and my kids vote for our senator”. It is almost like there is no choice,even if there literally is someone running against these peeps. Schumer, McConnell, Wayden, and Markey.
Comments
Minimum age requirements for Federal Offices is one reason.
House – 25 years
Senate – 30 years
President – 35 years
States also have minimum age requirements. In Texas they are:
House – 21 years
Senate – 26 years
Governor – 30 years
Young people don’t know how much they don’t know yet. Old people have name recognition and money. Difficult to trust a young person with name recognition and money because it’s probably because of the Name and not the person’s actions. There’s more old people that can vote than young people who can vote.
A big part of it is because you need connections and influence to be selected and have any chance to win, something most young people don’t have.
People like experience. Older people have more experience. People in politics also tend to stay there a long time
A big part is our politics is all money and power. Things gained with age. We have very very few “for the people” representatives.
It takes a long time to build the connections needed to win elections, both with donors and with people that can help the politician attract voters.
And once a politician gets elected, they often keep getting elected over and over again. So maybe they were elected at a young age, but they’ve been there a long time and now they’re old.
Also, people often spend their 20s getting an education and their 30 and 40s focused on raising a family and earning money. They just don’t have the time and energy to run for office.
It takes time and experience to get elected.
Think about it like this, to get elected you have to gain the support of your political party (locally and/or nationally), raise millions of dollars, and put together a campaign consisting of dozen to hundreds of people.
That doesn’t count the other skills like learning about the political system, learning the issues (not just social media talking points), making yourself presentable, learning to talk to an audience, learning to connect with people on an individual level, and so much more.
And once you have all of that, you need to not have a job and have enough free time to dedicate a year of your life to something you might not get.
How many people before 30 have all of that lined up?
There is a minimum age for US Senators, Representatives and POTUS. Unsure about all of the State Senators and Reps, I’m assuming some have an age requirement.
Age usually means experience and though there aren’t really any qualifications for these positions, people vote for experience whether that be other political experience(which keeps most in their positions for a while) or just life experience which means a 40 year old who’s been through what their constituents struggle with every day is likely to get more votes than a 25 year old fresh out of college who has t had to face adversity quite yet.
Also some people tend to vote against their own self interests. Ie broke people voting for an old billionaire who doesn’t understand their struggles.
Two reasons, the first is incumbent advantage, once you get in, you have the name recognition, and you have the funding to run a campaign, plus you can point to basically any pork you managed to secure for your district as an accomplishment. All this means you end up with politicians who have served in their role for a very long time winning many successive elections.
The second addresses why older people tend to get elected in the first place, and that is experience. Simply living longer gives you a broader base of lessons learned to draw from on future decisions. Suppose you have some catastrophic incident requiring a plumber and you get two bids that are about even in pricing. Would you rather have the plumber who is 48 years old with 25 years of experience, or the one who is 26 with 5 years of experience?
You need some sort of life experience to be a plausible candidate. Additionally, it helps if you’ve got some measure of financial independence because running for office while you’re working a full time job is difficult. If we’re discussing federal office, many politicians start in state politics, and it takes years of working there before they’re getting the experience and donor support to be realistic candidates for higher office. Lastly, the US Senate in particular rewards seniority with power, so you see lots of extremely old people there.
Corporations spend a lot of money on these people. Once they
have them properly trainedfind some sympathetic to their cause and have turned them into controllable predictable entities they have little desire to find new ones.… because you don’t just run for Senate. First you run for dog-catcher. Then you get a little higher and become a school trustee. Then, after a few steps, maybe a state representative. All that takes time. Years. Then, eventually they run for governor or US rep, or Senator. And fail. Then run again. Fail. Then finally, maybe, win. They are like 50 at that time if they’re lucky.
Because, unlike other countries, where the number of politicians is proportional to the population, the number of politicians in the US is fixed, no matter how large the population grows. There are 2 Senators per state, and 435 members of the House of Representatives. The number of Representatives was fixed in 1929. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-house-got-stuck-at-435-seats/
So if the old ones don’t retire, the young ones can’t get in.
This is quite undemocratic, actually. It’s one representative for every 786k people. Germany, on the other hand, has 133k people per Bundestag member. One of the most democratic nations in the world, Iceland, has 389k people, and 63 members in its national legislature, for a ratio of 6,181 people per legislator. That’s much more democratic!
Most of the oldest (most notably US senate) have been being elected for a hella long time as well. Good old Chuck Grassly is the oldest at 90, he is also the longest serving. He was a reasonable 42 when elected the first time. At some point they keep getting elected ,because people just default to “i know that name,been hearing it my whole life, my grandparents, parents and now me and my kids vote for our senator”. It is almost like there is no choice,even if there literally is someone running against these peeps. Schumer, McConnell, Wayden, and Markey.