In politics, what is a 'young person'?

[Ordos]

The age requirement for voting and the age requirement for certain elected or even unelected political offices range from 16-45. There are so many I cannot list them. The youngest age threshold in the world for voting was in Iran at age 15 but that has since been moved up to 18. The oldest age requirement for an elected office that I know of is President of Singapore at 45. 

So with that in mind, when certain politicians and the media of whatever country you reside in talk about 'young people', what age do they usually have it at? Some say under 25 and some say under 30. Sometimes I hear it at under 35. Very rarely do I hear it at under 40 or under 45.

On a personal note; I'm 31 and the voting age in my country is 17. These days I'm hearing a lot about 'millennials' as they are calling them now, overwhelmingly supporting Bernard Sanders for his candidacy for President of the United States. I support Sanders. If I were an American at 31 do I say 'I'm one of those young people' or 'I agree with those young people'?

And while we are on this subject, what's with these arbitrary age thresholds for certain elected offices? Why can I be mayor at 18, but not President until I'm 35 (most countries, not just the USA have it at this age)? Why in the US can you be a congressman at 25 but not a senator until your 30? Why 35 for the highest office? I think at 30 I already have enough 'life experience'. What those life experiences are is a different question. Do governments around the world have scientists researching how the human brain develops over time to determine people's qualifications for elected office?

Some countries also have a retirement age for elected office but that's another thread.

[Dr. Pepper]

The age range a politician is discussing when they mention young persons is really going to depend on context.  If they are talking about young people in the context of voters, I always assume it means the youngest generation of voters.  Right now that's the millennial generation, people about 35 and younger (depending on age of majority, so in the US 18-35, which happens to be around the current age range of the millennials).  In a couple of years time, the people they'll be talking about in terms of young voters will shift to Generation Z (aka iGen, GenTech, Plurals, etc) and so for a few years the idea of young person won't be the 35 and younger crowd, but more like 25 and younger until those kiddos age up.  It fluctuates.

 

[Jo498]

Look up the etymology of senate.

What counts as young is different among sociologist and others dividing up the populace. Because the really young usually cannot vote, young voters is a different group than e.g. young patients or young consumers of soft drinks. For voting/politics I'd roughly draw the line between young and not so young at 30.

In Germany the threshold for MP and Chancellor is 18 (same as voting age and general legal majority) but 40 for the president (the president has only representative and is not determined by a general election anyway. The youngest president so far was 51 when he entered the office and he felt very young for the job ;))

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Ordos said:

And while we are on this subject, what's with these arbitrary age thresholds for certain elected offices? Why can I be mayor at 18, but not President until I'm 35 (most countries, not just the USA have it at this age)? Why in the US can you be a congressman at 25 but not a senator until your 30? Why 35 for the highest office? I think at 30 I already have enough 'life experience'. What those life experiences are is a different question. Do governments around the world have scientists researching how the human brain develops over time to determine people's qualifications for elected office?

Simple. The US Constitution determines the age threshold for the Executive and Congress (though not the Judicial Branch, IIRC - I don't think there's anything stopping the appointment of children to the Supreme Court). Those provisions have never been amended because there's been no pressure to amend them.

(Here the age threshold is 18 for MPs, so in theory you could have an 18 year old Prime Minister. No age requirement for Governor General).

[Which Tyler]

"Young" is always anyone more than 10-15 years younger than whoever it is that's speaking.

Excepting Student debates - where "Young" is either anyone more than 2 years younger than the speaker; or anyone less than 5 years older than the speaker; if they're classifying themselves as "Young"

[sologdin]

fetals.  the logical extreme of pro-life politics is in utero suffrage. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 hours ago, sologdin said:

fetals.  the logical extreme of pro-life politics is in utero suffrage. 

Surely the logical extreme is individual sperm cells?

[Dany's Silver]

I think that voting should be introduced in high school (get'em involved young!) at the age of 16. I think that they should have to not only learn about their system of governance (for whichever country they live in), but also participate. Perhaps if kids could feel that their vote can have an impact on the outcome it might influence them to continue voting into adulthood. The apathy among citizens of voting age is incredible. 

[Datepalm]

Depends on particular local political circumstances, I think. In some places in Africa, "youth" can easily mean up to 45 - it has less to do with age than with failing to achieve some of the trappings and milestones of adulthood in fairly traditional societies, like getting an education, having a regular job, being able to build a house and therefore get married, etc. Poverty or war can mean that those never happened to a huge swathe of the population, so there you go - a particular demographic constituting particular problems. In Israel it's a lot in the context of home ownership. In the USA student debt and underemployment seem to be the thing. I'm sure each place has it's own stuff that defines youth as a political class. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

16 hours ago, Dany's Silver said:

I think that voting should be introduced in high school (get'em involved young!) at the age of 16. I think that they should have to not only learn about their system of governance (for whichever country they live in), but also participate. Perhaps if kids could feel that their vote can have an impact on the outcome it might influence them to continue voting into adulthood. The apathy among citizens of voting age is incredible. 

My big worry with voting at 16 is that it gives parents and teachers disproportionate influence. At 18 you're dealing with adults.

[Jo498]

Are you kidding or do you really think that people suddenly become far more mature and free of influences at 18? I don't think peer and media influence is not necessarily better than teacher's and parents'... As I recall the voting age is down to 16 for some local elections in Germany. It did not really change a lot, as far as I remember.

And if one did a test whether people understood the main structure of the system of governance in a country and let only those vote who pass, I am pretty sure that at least half of the >18 (or >25) population would fail anyway.

[Iskaral Pust]

From a pragmatic point of view, I think of "young" in politics as being at least of voting age but with (much) lower than average voting turnout, very minor contribution yet to national taxes, not yet embedded in the traditional institutions of adulthood, e.g. marriage, kids, home mortgage, etc and relatively focused on launching their own life/career plus some room for social and/or eco idealism.  So currently in the US that looks like most of 18-25 and a large portion of 25-30 too.

I use that category because I expect it to shape their political perspective.  They don't currently pay much of the cost of the state, they are focused more on the future and the creation of opportunities than preserving entitlements, they aren't yet locked into things that can be expensively affected by govt policy, e.g. a mortgage, a school district, property taxes, a regional economy, social safety net for their own families and their parents, etc.  The major policy areas they might focus on would be student debt, first-time home buying and access to careers.  So because they have less at stake in the state, both taxes and benefits, they tend to vote less reliably.

[S John]

A young person is anyone you feel qualified to lecture.  

[The Killer Snark]

In the UK, it's a Guardian reader. The Left political establishment has been campaigning for years to lower the age to vote because the young are more likely to vote in a restrictive Far Left government because of the garbage they get taught by Marxist professors even in high schools. I myself was briefly Left Wing as a teenager, but the current generation will most likely not grow out of it.

[Datepalm]

High schools are rife with Marxist professors now? Nice. 

[Which Tyler]

Any high school with professors instead of teachers is going to be far too posh to have marxist ones.

[The Killer Snark]

The semantic distinction was intentional.

[Jo498]

I am pretty sure that the maximum of marxist teachers in Western European or maybe also American schools was reached sometime in the early to mid 1980s. (The ones who attended university in the late 60s and 70s and had not yet relapsed to a comfortable bourgeois stance while paying lip service to mild leftism.)

And back then it was balanced by lots of really conservative teachers that have died out by now.

[Iskaral Pust]

The New Yorker has a very good article at the moment called The Big Uneasy (available for free if you haven't already read 10 articles this month, or whatever the limit is now) that looks at the ultra-liberals of Oberlin and elsewhere devouring themselves as intersectional personally experienced oppression goes nuclear and everyone needs a safe space from anything they find objectionable and they all compete to be the most oppressed and each of their particular oppressions simultaneously requires universal genuflection and special treatment above all others.

Being liberal used to mean supporting personal freedom, especially in speech, thought, art and self-expression.  Now, apparently, it means some jack-booted tyranny where every individual gets to decide how oppressed they feel and the rest of the world has to kowtow to their sensibility -- including tangible concessions like money, positions, what is taught, etc -- until they feel suitably unoppressed.

I guess the victimhood generation is a subset of young voters.

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The New Yorker has a very good article at the moment called The Big Uneasy (available for free if you haven't already read 10 articles this month, or whatever the limit is now) that looks at the ultra-liberals of Oberlin and elsewhere devouring themselves as intersectional personally experienced oppression goes nuclear and everyone needs a safe space from anything they find objectionable and they all compete to be the most oppressed and each of their particular oppressions simultaneously requires universal genuflection and special treatment above all others.

Reminds me of a recent discussion I had with one of these people. This went broadly as follows:

"I think it's disgusting that some Maori are preventing women from speaking at marae."

"Yes, but they're already being criticised within their own community."

"But I can criticise them too."

"No you can't. Because you're white and thus don't appreciate their racial struggles."

"Can they criticise me?"

"Of course they can."

Et cetera.

It's downright painful as an old-school lefty (who believes in the equality of all mankind) to see the trendy urban left basically fetish a new hierarchy. It's a dead-end, of course, since by the time you've finished deciding who is the most oppressed, you've alienated everyone else.