A modest proposal

With apologies to the inimitable Jonathan Swift......

I've written here before about Western democracies turning into the kind of gerontocracies that Mao Zedong would have envied.  The United States is the prime example, with its septuagenarian President.  Arrayed against Trump on the Democratic side is an equally un-spry bunch: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, all of them well past the Biblical three-score-and-ten.  Sure, there are some younger folks in the Democratic Party, such as Beto O'Rourke or Alexandra Ocario-Cortes, but come on!  We all saw how Hillary basically forced the Democrats to accept her awful candidacy in 2016, and now Pelosi has imposed herself onto a doubt-ridden party as Majority Leader.  Chances of someone young and dynamic running against Trump in 2020 already look slim. 

Over in the UK things may be even worse, with dead people set to deliver a Brexit that young people don't want.  One researcher, using actuarial data, has made a remarkable calculation.  If you just take the people who actually voted in 2016 and eliminate those who have died in the last thirty months, the tiny majority for Brexit has just about vanished, because the older people who were the main supporters of that ludicrous decision are moving on to meet their maker.  Think about that next time Theresa May or Jacob Rees-Mogg asserts that a second vote would be a betrayal of democracy.

What can be done about this?  Well, here we come to my modest proposal which, you will be relieved to learn, has nothing to do with eating babies.  We don't allow people under the age of eighteen to vote because we judge they can't be relied on to determine what's in their and their country's interest.  Yet we allow people to continue voting right up to the point when they take their last breath, even though they won't have to live with the consequences if they make insane decisions, like Brexit.  Should there maybe be an age beyond which citizens are no longer permitted to help in setting public policies which they won't have to pay for and which will far outlive them?  No vote before 18, no vote after 80??

I'm not entirely serious about this because I know it's a non-starter, but I'm not entirely unserious either.  I've long felt that the obligations of the old to the young far outweigh the obligations of the young to the old.  Right now we oldsters are doing a bang-up job of leaving an unholy mess to our descendants.  Something needs to be done to rein us in -- anyone have a better idea?