Gerontocracy. A Rant.
I recently posted this on our aviation blog:
When you are keeping the original barstormers flying.
I've posted about this elsewhere, when I was really miffed about it, but Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis has introduced a bill in the Senate to raise mandatory airline pilot retirement ages up to age 67.
Lummis is 68.
Let's note the trend here. Lummis is 68. Wyoming's John Barasso is 70. Wyoming's Congressman Harriet Hageman, at age 60, could nearly be regarded as youthful.
Joe Biden is 80. Donald Trump is 77. Chuck Schumer is 72. Mitch McConnell is 81.
This is, quite frankly, absurd.
The United States is, without a doubt, a gerontocracy.
Okay, what's that have to do with airlines?
We repeatedly here there's a pilot shortage. What is obviously necessary to, in regard to the shortage, is to recruit younger pilots into the field. That requires opportunity and a decent wage.
Vesting the good paying jobs in the elderly is not the way to achieve that. Indeed, depressing the mandatory retirement age would be.
I suspect this bill will not pass, but the problem it notes is frankly severe.
Why is nothing getting done in this country? And why are young people so disgruntled by work that old people complain about how disgruntled they are.
In large measure, this country and society is completely dominated by the elderly.
Now, this smacks of ageism, and it is. But there does come a time when one generation needs to back off and hand the reins to another. The Baby Boomer generation is past that time, and it refused to yield.
It's absolutely insane that the two top contenders for the highest elected office in the nation is between two ancient men. Seriously? Can people whose world views were formed in the 60s really be expected to lead on any current crisis? We've never expected such old people to rule in times of trouble before.
Franklin Roosevelt, who was regarded as old going into his fourth and fatally final term, was 63 years old when he died.
Woodrow Wilson, who lead the country through the Great War, was 67 when he died in 1924. He outlived his great rival, Theodore Roosevelt, by several years. TR died when he was 60, just as he'd always expected to.
Abraham Lincoln was 56 years old, serving in his second term, when he was assassinated. I note that because in the greatest crisis in the country's history, we had a President in his 50s. . . not his 70s or 80s.
And its not just the Oval Office. As noted above, the levers of Congress' machinery are held by the ancient, in many instances. Wyoming just turned its Congressional seat over to a "freshman" who is now a freshman at age 60.
Lawyers at age 60, as she is, ought to be looking towards how things are going to be handled in the next decade as they inevitably face decline. That doesn't mean taking up a leadereship role in teh country.
And people aren't really choosing these antiquarian figures. They have no choice. It's much like this meme from the Simpson's that is so well know, it's traveled the globe:
And you do, as they have the money, even if they ironically don't have the members.
We repeatedly hear that Wyoming is the most "Red State" (meaning Communist, of course, oh wait ... not that means the most conservative as red is the color of socialism. . . oh wait, that's not right, blue is the international color of the far right so that means. . . oh never mind). Even here, however, party registration breaks out in this fashion:
Sure, that means that "independents" are about 9% of the figure for Republicans, but we all know that at least a quarter of the GOP is made up of registrants who have gone there due to the Simpsonian monster. If you want a voice, you have to vote in the GOP primary.
And that means you have to accept that at the end of the day, the people you are voting in, with the odd exception of Chuck Gray, who is another topic, are going to be old.
And it's not just in politics. Business is often, but not exclusively, dominated by the old. In something, I personally follow, although not everyone does, the leadership of the Catholic Church, the Bishops, is elderly and heavily influenced by Priests who came of age in a liberal era, and therefore are in conflict with younger more conservative ones.
The law is dominated by the elderly as well. Look at any Supreme Court, for the most part. Wyoming just took a failed run at raising the judicial retirement age up from the current age 70, which is pretty old. It failed, but it had the backing of the Chief Justice of the state. And this is the second time this has been tried in recent years.
For a variety of reason, for most of American history, people tended to step into their work in a major way in their 20s. They were often very fully established by their 30s. Doing that now is difficult in the extreme, thanks to people over 60.
People look back on certain generations that never had a voice. "Lost Generations". Nearly everyone in the shadow of the Baby Boom Generation fits into that category to some extent, some more than others.
Be that as it may, we're not going to solve long term budget problems, energy problems, border problems, and the like, looking to people who look out and see the world through 1973 lenses.
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