How Kids Could Help Their Parents Act Like Grownups
August 4th, 2010 . by economistmomMatt Miller has the answer (from the Washington Post):
What this country needs is a movement to lower the voting age to 10. Hear me out.
Wherever you look, from debt to schools to climate to pensions, the distinctive feature of American public life today is a shocking disregard for the future. Yes, politicians blather on about “our children and grandchildren” all the time — but when it comes to what they actually do, the future doesn’t have a vote. If you want to change people’s behavior, you need to change their incentives. It’s time to give politicians a reason not simply to praise children, but also to pander to them.
About 125 million Americans voted in the 2008 presidential election. There are about 35 million Americans ages 10 to 17. Giving them the vote would transform our political conversation. It would introduce the voice we’re sorely missing — a call to stewardship, of governing for the long run, via the kind of simple, “childlike” questions that never get asked today.
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We’re in a topsy-turvy world best captured by my favorite political cartoon from the debt-soaked 1980s:
“Your generation will just have to spend a third of your income to support my generation when you grow up,” says a stern father.
“Why us?” his scared daughter asks.
“Because of your failure as children to teach your parents to be responsible.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy!”
“So am I.”
I love it. If Matt’s idea came to life, why, suddenly my own kids’ “say” would quadruple. (Only my oldest is of voting age now.)
I know some 10 year-olds I would trust with the vote, but judgement seems to go downhill for a while in the teenage years.
Nah, it would never work for two reasons…beyond the obvious one.
First off, it’s unlikly that 10 to 17 year olds would vote a lot, just as 18 to 25 year olds do not. As such, the amount of pandering would be fairly low.
Second, the pandering would be in the here and now, not in the future. So, we might get discounted movies and lower text messaging prices but I rather doubt we’d get a solution to global warming or eduction, not that I think the Federal government can solve either problem of course
Nobody thinks less about the future than kids.
Why do 18-year-olds rush to join the Marines? They can’t imagine a future a couple years away in which they get killed!
We already have millions of kids 18-and-up who don’t vote. So what good would having more do?
People over 50 vote with motivation because they’ve lived long enough to know the future matters and comes true. The only thing that teaches you that is living long enough.
OBVIOUSLY the political system — all political systems around the world, since this problem is universal — need some new incentive for politicians that will make them feel pain today for looting the future, to offset the short-term benefit they get from doing so. As today they get only the benefit — with the future becoming ever more fully looted, just as one would expect from such an one-sided incentive system
It’s a serious problem, and it would be nice if the likes of Matt Miller would use supposedly valuable space in the WaPo to say something serious about it, instead of being so sophomorically cutesy-pooh.
How about this idea?
Have the US govt start issuing perpetual bonds, like the consols of the British — a US Treasury consol. Always issued at a nominal price (not inflation indexed) and bearing a market interest rate.
Have all government employee retirement benefits funded with these consols. Every year, each employee earns whatever benefit, financed by buying these perpetuals. Interest earned on them is reinvested in more of them.
When the employees retire, they get benefits based on what the perpetuals are worth then — if there’s been inflation, they lose. If the credit rating of the US has slipped so interest rates have risen, reducing the price of their perpetuals bought 35, 45, 55 years earlier, they lose. But if inflation goes down, the credit rating of the US improves, they gain.
(There’s need be safeguards against creating incentives for deflation — but with over $100 trillion of unfunded entitlement benefits booked at present value today,that doesn’t look like the serious long-term issue of the moment).
Now govt workers and their unions would have a powerful incentive to fight any fiscal policy that could imaginably result in any need to “inflate away debt” *ever* in the future, or in any way ever knock the US credit rating below AAA — or for that matter below AAAAAA. (Quite opposite from the incentives government unions have today to loot the future.)
We all know how politicians respond to government unions — but if that’s not enough of a counter- incentive for politicians we can go further just for them.
Every time a Senator or Rep or President is elected, all that politician’s property and assets are appraised and, say, oh, 100% of the politician’s total wealth is used as security for a loan to buy perpetuals of like amount for the politician, which can’t be cashed for maybe 30 years. If the perpetuals lose real value the politicians can be wiped out. If not, the politicians get the profits from leveraged successful investment. That might change the political fiscal culture.
Ain’t gonna happen, of course.
But something has to happen, eventually.
If we want to prepare possibilities for that day that could be taken seriously, we probably want to talk about things other than the likes of giving the vote to 10-year-olds. IMHO.
Intriguing idea, Jim.
I wish California voters could get a chance to vote on moving all state employee retirement investments into long-term California bonds. Maybe the unions would start acting responsibly.
Actually, the unions would just find friendly judges to overrule the voters. Never mind. The crash is the only way out.
Jim,
My son joined the Marines in 2007 at age 19. It was a sober decision, and his future and risk of cutting it short was a big part of it.
There’s an easier and more meaningful way for people to cast a vote “for the kids.” Enact a Debt Limit Referendum and let the voters have direct control over the amount of public debt they bestow to their children and grandchildren.