Elon Musk

[Belsnickel]

(12-07-2021, 11:45 AM)Goalpost Wrote: Musk is probably a bit unhappy with how his company has been treated recently. Five years ago his company was praised as the example of green world ideas. Fast forward to today, and his company wasn't even invited to the White House....Biden invited the union automakers....Musk was excluded even though his company is the largest auto company, by far, in market cap. The green new deals, in the build back better bills, omit his company from govt incentives which is given to the likes of Ford, etc, instead. Many think the govt is trying to make winners and losers based on union status in their approach. So five years ago the people who loved him have turned on him.

When you think about all of the controversies surrounding Musk that have occurred in the past five years, he really has no one else to blame but himself.

[*Nately120*]

(12-07-2021, 01:38 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: This is an interesting topic. I have long thought that there should be an age limit for Presidents on the upper end but have never had a serious conversation. My original thought was 65-70 be the limit. Not saying anyone's wrong, but I'd like to be educated on opposing viewpoints as to why this wouldn't be a good idea.

I look at it less as would it be a good idea or not, and more as how many people who say "candidate X is too old" would stick with that mindset if the parties were switched.  It's also interesting that right after 155 million votes are cast for candidates that were 78 and 74 and the 2024 election is shaping up to be a man who is 82 vs a man who is 78 we decide it's time to wonder if we should be forbidden the candidates we have been given.

People can say a woman shouldn't be president, or anyone over 65 shouldn't be president, but unless they'd legimately go against their party to vote for an oppositely aligned candidate who is the right age or gender it's all just bs talk.  

Find a democrat and a republican who agree that old people shouldn't be president and then ask them to pick between Biden and Trump Jr. or Trump and Pete Buttigeg and I'd bet my left nut they don't switch sides.  Rather, they'll say why their old ass candidate is still the better choice.


tl;dr - people are full of mularkey

[CKwi88]

(12-07-2021, 01:38 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: This is an interesting topic. I have long thought that there should be an age limit for Presidents on the upper end but have never had a serious conversation. My original thought was 65-70 be the limit. Not saying anyone's wrong, but I'd like to be educated on opposing viewpoints as to why this wouldn't be a good idea.

Because time and age treats everyone differently, both physically and mentally. Any age limit set would be completely arbitrary and not really grounded in any objective rationale. 

[BengalYankee]

Would age limit also be for Congresspersons and Senators? Many are very old like 3rd in line Nancy Pelosi[81].

[*Nately120*]

Country that keeps electing old people wishes old people weren't eligible to be elected.

A year ago a 78 year old Mitch McConnell wiped the floor with an opponent 30+ years his junior, and in Georgia Jon Ossof beat an opponent who is a whooping 37 years older than he is and in response people are scrambling to alter voting rights so something like that never happens again.

[KillerGoose]

(12-07-2021, 02:56 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: Because time and age treats everyone differently, both physically and mentally. Any age limit set would be completely arbitrary and not really grounded in any objective rationale. 

What’s the justification for a minimum age of 35, then? Why wouldn’t the same logic apply?

[CKwi88]

(12-08-2021, 12:26 AM)KillerGoose Wrote: What’s the justification for a minimum age of 35, then? Why wouldn’t the same logic apply?

It does. The reasoning behind the minimum age was largely arbitrary as well. I'm of the opinion that anyone that has reached the age of majority should be able to run for and be elected president.

[KillerGoose]

(12-08-2021, 08:41 AM)CKwi88 Wrote: It does. The reasoning behind the minimum age was largely arbitrary as well. I'm of the opinion that anyone that has reached the age of majority should be able to run for and be elected president.

Interesting. Okay, thanks for your answers. You’re right, my age limit of 65-70 was arbitrary. I wasn’t basing it off of anything concrete.

[*Nately120*]

(12-08-2021, 12:26 AM)KillerGoose Wrote: What’s the justification for a minimum age of 35, then? Why wouldn’t the same logic apply?

Because if we let people under 35 run the dumbass voters in this country would do something stupid like elect a celebrity with no political experience who has gained political popularity by saying a bunch of unsubstantiated crap on Twitter. 

[GMDino]

(12-08-2021, 12:26 AM)KillerGoose Wrote: What’s the justification for a minimum age of 35, then? Why wouldn’t the same logic apply?

The smartass answer is because a bunch of white guys some who were not even 35 yet) said so in 1787 and the rest of the country (that could read) shrugged and went "eh, ok".

The real answer isn't much different.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-does-a-presidential-candidate-need-to-be-35-years-old-anyway/

Quote:The Constitution clearly spells out three age requirements for public office. First, the President and Vice President must be 35 years of age or older when assuming office; a Senator must be 30 years of age, and a member of the House must be 25 years of age. There are no age requirements for Supreme Court Justices.


Those requirements haven’t changed since the Constitution was written in 1787 and went into effect in 1789. Prior to that, the Articles of Confederation didn’t say how old members needed to be to serve in the Confederation Congress.

At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, there was little public debate about the age requirements and no discussion about the age requirement for the presidency.

The one discussion of note involved two important Founders: James Wilson, a future Supreme Court Justice, and George Mason, a constitutional dissenter. Mason, who was 62 years of age, argued that a requirement of 25 years of age was needed for the House because of his own experience. Mason said, “if interrogated [he would] be obliged to declare that his political opinions at the age of 21 were too crude and erroneous to merit an influence on public measures.”

Wilson, who was 45 years of age, said that any age limit on serving in public office would “damp the efforts of genius, and of laudable ambition. There was no more reason for incapacitating youth than age, where the requisite qualifications were found.” Wilson pointed to William Pitt the Younger, who served as British prime minister at the age of 24, and Lord Bolingbroke, who served in Parliament in his early 20s.

In the end, Mason won the argument and the drafting committee approved age limits by a 7-3 vote. There was some insight later from James Madison, writing in The Federalist 62, about why Senators needed to be older than House members.

Madison talked about the need for “senatorial trust” which required “greater extent of information and stability of character … that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages.”

Madison also discussed some points that some scholars believe led to the age requirements: a distrust of foreign influence and a fear of families trying to put children in place in federal office to serve in a hereditary manner. He feared the “indiscriminate and hasty admission” of people to Congress that “might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.”

James Monroe also wrote about the presidential age requirement making it difficult for a father and son to serve in a dynastic way. “The Constitution has provided, that no person shall be eligible to the office, who is not thirty five years old; and in the course of nature very few fathers leave a son who has arrived to that age,” he said in “A Native of Virginia, Observations upon the Proposed Plan of Federal Government.”

One interesting comment came from a Continental Congress member who was in Philadelphia in 1787 but not a delegate at the Constitutional Convention: Tench Coxe.

Coxe wrote a newspaper essay defending the need for the Constitution right after the debates were concluded.  “In America, as the President is to be one of the people at the end of his short term, so will he and his fellow citizens remember that he was originally one of the people; and that he is created by their breath. Further, he cannot be an idiot, probably not a knave or a tyrant, for those whom nature makes so, discover it before the age of thirty-five, until which period he cannot be elected.”

Ironically, 12 of the delegates at the Constitution Convention were under the age of 35, including Alexander Hamilton. Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the Preamble, was 35 years of age and James Madison was 36 years of age. Thomas Jefferson was also 33 years of age when he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

[*Nately120*]

Amusingly, the life expectancy of an American in 1787 when they decided you had to be 35 to run for office was about 38 years....therefore you had to be at 92% of the way through the average man's life expectancy to be president.

By that metric and the life expectancy of a male in the USA today being 77, the minimum age for a presidential candidate should be 71 years of age. I guess even Biden doesn't seem THAT old, anymore.

[GMDino]

(12-08-2021, 09:49 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Amusingly, the life expectancy of an American in 1787 when they decided you had to be 35 to run for office was about 38 years....therefore you had to be at 92% of the way through the average man's life expectancy to be president.

By that metric and the life expectancy of a male in the USA today being 77, the minimum age for a presidential candidate should be 71 years of age.  I guess even Biden doesn't seem THAT old, anymore.

When I was looking for that answer I saw one page that said that 40 year average was including infant mortality and many people lived well into the 60's and 70's and beyond.

*PROBABLY* the more well off...but still.