Sounds like you have a set of work goals and that’s fine. I just don’t think that needs to be imposed on others who have very different ideas of how to get fulfillment from their work. If the average age of retirement is 62, that means people on average would have 17 years (or more) of life where they are legally prevented from doing the job they love, even if they serve the voters’ interests. I’d say many people would love to continue doing a job they love far past the age of 62, and they should be able to do so, not have some arbitrary law keeping them from that. Ageism is already quite rampant in the private sector; I’m not sure it should be codified into public service.

If you (or any voter) find instances of politicians not sharing your interests, by all means, vote them out.

Eh, I’ve seen people doing a job they like way past the “standard” retirement age. But here’s the important part - IF they are not being forced out by the company and/or the culture. It so happens a lot of people like having a sense of purpose and doing a job they like is often a big part of that. Telling people to wander off to go play shuffleboard or whatever the fuck and just wait to die is not much of a purpose.

Often it’s doctors I’ve seen work well into their 70s/80s, though I think the corruption brought by acquisition of practices/hospitals and insurance companies is probably changing that, I’ve known of at least one doctor more or less forced into retirement against his will.

Some people actually really do believe in the idea of civic duty and serving their country, so I have zero problem with politicians that work way past the “standard” retirement age. I’d have to take it on a case by case basis. I definitely have zero interest in arbitrary age limits and term limits removing good candidates from the field entirely. That should be up to the voters.

Someone like Pelosi irritates me no end, but it’s more her stance on insider trading and the way she has tried to gatekeep progressives from entering than anything else. She could be in her 30s and on her first term, and it would still drive me up the wall.

LOCK. HER. UP.

I would so love to see someone doing some cosplay bullshit in front of HER prison cell. 🤣

This one - Live Debt Free, by Ted Carroll

https://archive.org/details/livedebtfreemake00carr

Even reading this in the early 00s was kinda wild when it came to some of the talk of house prices. Most of the principles still hold, though, especially when it comes to deferring gratitude and so on.

The notion of moving somewhere low-cost is probably more relevant than ever, though, given the idea of remote work having been broken wide open because of Covid. Prior to that, most companies viewed it as something slightly scandalous to even ask about.

So tired of the winning.

It’s too bad we couldn’t have put AI to good use instead of the thing most of the elite have reached for first (destroying jobs).

We could have generated deepfakes of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers saying great things about Donvict (while out of office), fabricate an entire election for him in the run-up to 2024, and surround him with a set of paid actors telling him he’s President, letting him sign bullshit EOs and legislation. Have someone fashion a Nobel Peace Prize and deepfake the news about it and so on. All “channels” on his screen(s) are just a stream of AI deepfakes all praising Dear Leader Donvict.

Just generally making him feel like a Bigly Important Big Boy, all tucked away in an old folks’ home or Mar-a-Lago.

I would even take someone like a Romney over this nightmare. Certainly Kamala would have been 1000x better than this…but apparently we cannot even have mildly nice things.

I just don’t think term limits are anywhere near the panacea some people seem to think they are. I’ve heard crusty old conservatives mutter “term limits” about politics ever since I can remember. Almost in the same tone I hear some of them say “cull the herd” and “tort reform” these days. It just seems like some mantra to repeat.

And now I see others outside the conservasphere sometimes taking up this mantra. It strikes me as a distraction, if I’m honest. The real problem is money and legalized bribery and I don’t know what term limits would possibly accomplish, other than just having more people with no experience in these roles. There is nothing to say they could not be groomed by the likes of Thiel and just do self-dealing from minute one just because of their age or the number of terms they have had.

I’ve always been baffled by this heroic notion of a magical outsider, brought into politics, and simply by virtue of being an outsider that it would be a good thing. Politician is about the only endeavor where there is this odd wish to have a NON-expert in that position. The term limits mantra often seems to go hand in hand with the pining for the outsider thing. And I’ll just never get it.

Being a politician is like any other field, and requires expertise. I don’t see people pining for term limits on doctors, mechanics, plumbers, businessmen, dentists, etc., and I sure don’t see people signing up to be the first to have their teeth drilled by an outsider, just to “shake things up”.

Also:

Senate blocks war powers measure and House follows suit – now president can bomb Iran free from congressional interference

“Interference”? I think they mean even the least amount of oversight, LOL.

The now-hypothetical balance of powers is not something we should be calling “interference”.

All the cons, like Mikey Johnson, should be given a cuck chair.

Maybe someone like Newsom can orchestrate something where he presents all the cuckservatives a golden cuck chair to watch Donvict having his way with the Constitution.

If a viable candidate runs in the primary, and the voters show up, then that’s the opportunity to have the old guard pushed out. I don’t see any problem with that and it’s how it is supposed to work. What I object to is some kind of blanket rules about term limits or age limits. That removes the opportunity for voters to reward candidates they like.

Yes, that’s so true. I remember coming into a small amount of money and had been saving a little bit, and had just paid off a ridiculously long car loan on a used car - still one of the dumbest financial decisions I had made in my youth - 5.5 years on a used car, WTF was I even thinking, LOL.

Anyway, I was itching to buy some new car possibly, as I had never bought new. Someone handed me a book about finances and the author reiterated what my parents had always tried to drill into my head - about the only worthwhile debt is real estate.

For cars, he had this notion of “paying yourself” the car payment once you pay off a car. Do that for many years, and use that savings for your next car, preferably used, about 2 or 3 years old, after which the depreciation has had the steepest drop.

So I skipped buying something new or used. For so many reasons, I am glad my co-worker lent me that book at that particular time.

It is true: I am highly dismissive of some kind of arbitrary cutoff based on age or term limits.

I completely understand the deep frustration with certain individuals, for example, Schumer and Pelosi. But it has little to do with their age or the number of terms they have had, in my view. Things like this should be determined, by voters, on a case by case basis.

If people are really that animated about changing the guard, then they need to do the work and show up on primaries, whether that is going so far as running themselves, or working for campaigns, or at least voting. But arbitrarily preempting the choices that others may want to vote for if they like a candidate, regardless (or perhaps because) of age/years of experience seems very unwise.

Yep. The right loves to pride themselves on being rational (lol) and the other side as being “emotional”, but these are the same morons that cannot stand to come up against an idea that offends them.

Ironically, they also whine about being “cancelled” but cheer having this corrupt administration police and/or shut down school content, park signs, and late night comedy shows.

I sure hope all these things are being kept somewhere so that if sanity is ever restored by having a Democratic administration, they put all this back up in like one day or one week, and broadcast that fact very prominently.

Yep. I don’t really see any positive organizations/groups love-bombing young men.

Honestly, my generation also heard rather dire messages of a bleak future for us - literally, one of my first memories of punk was listening to “No Future” by the Sex Pistols. We were watching our parents grinding it out as economic hardship and new ideas about how to run corporations hit our parents. Ronnie Raygunism and Thatcherism seemed to result into young men falling into groups like the neo-Nazi skinheads in some areas, but that was at the margins and there were no “influencers” and there was no way for people like to “find the others” like this.

Back then, if someone bitched like these incels or these douchebros wanting a trad wife - they’d be told they are just too chickenshit and lazy to clean themselves up and learn to talk to women. They were not able to all find each other, en masse, have a few of them profit off of it, and then tell each other it is all the fault of the womenfolk. That’s not to say all of us were in a healthy place, but at least there was no multiplier effect like there is now.

I was one of the biggest fans and boosters of the 'net in the early days. These days, it seems to have so many negative effects, especially on the impressionable.

I think there is a real male loneliness epidemic and a crisis of identity among younger males, it seems.

Few people/institutions seem to be offering men an off-ramp from this confusion and stress…except for this toxic brosphere stuff, sadly. It really explains a lot about things like the Proud Boys.

Like you - I would not suggest a church as the solution. I really don’t know what the answer is for healthy outlets and support structures for men truly is, though. People yelling “men suck” at them is likely to only push them deeper into the worst behaviors.

Historically, this kind of discontent has never ended well.

But yeah violent misogyny must be met with feminism with teeth. We will not go back.

I don’t know: these people seem to be getting a permission structure from the government. Honestly, I’ve been watching some of this stuff and mostly being quiet about a lot of it, even online.

But if you ask me honestly? I’m terrified about the direction things seem to be going. I’ve seen lots of unhelpful intergenerational warfare, mostly about boomers and Gen Y taking shots at one another, while my generation (Gen X) is playing the part of the forgotten child, just as we always have. Boomers seem to get blamed for everything in life, but it’s not like these other generations don’t have any agency!

But I’m very concerned about Gen Z and alpha, and just where they are going. It’s possible some of these people may break out of their mind forged manacles and moderate themselves or become more progressive, but that’s not how these things tend to work. People tend to drift to the right as they get older, not the other direction. And if they are starting at the trad wife position at such a young age?..yikes.

Well, gosh. This falls right in line with what I’ve been saying and wondering aloud about things like the Fourth Turning.

The Archie Bunker thing was something boomers stood up to make fun of their parents’ generation. That is the kind of thing that all this ginned-up inter-generational warfare that seems largely directed at the boomers (and the Silent Generation and Generation Jones somewhat) seems to miss.

And now we have all these younger “influencers” (barf) doing this kind of thing openly and unironically in the brosphere. The trad wife influencers. And those people and their fans are not the boomers…

HOLY SHIT.

84 months!

We are going to continue to drive our 16 year old car and 8 year old car around for a while longer, I hope. I cannot imagine paying for a car for 7 years, damn.

Until these assholes get around to forcing people to join them in their xtian delusions.