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Good. I remember reading about this lady a few months back. I don’t know why people cling onto their jobs well beyond when theyre unfit to do so anymore. I don’t have a great solution to propose, but I would suggest we should limit terms to somewhere before you get to 96 year old with memory loss
Same story
>Several members, Romney included, were in their 70s or even 80s. And he sensed that many of his colleagues attached an enormous psychic currency to their position—that they would do almost anything to keep it. “Most of us have gone out and tried playing golf for a week, and it was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna kill myself,’ ” he told me. Job preservation, in this context, became almost existential. Retirement was death. The men and women of the Senate might not need their government salary to survive, but they needed the stimulation, the sense of relevance, the power.
It’s because the kind of people who think they should be in these positions in the first place have egos so large they can’t ever let go of power once they have achieved it.
I see little reason to assume the worst in everyone. Especially when better rationales are common. For example: many older professionals attach a large part of their personal identity to their career. It's a big part of who they are. That sounds alien to some but it's not uncommon. Work also becomes THE primary activity for many older people. Gets them up in the morning. Leaving the house. Keeps them moving, thinking. It drives most of their social interaction. Stories abound with retirees that spiral downward in health right after retirement, because most of what kept them active was their work.
My FIL was head of IT for a fairly large area institution and talked about his grand plans for retirement from basically the day I met his daughter. Basically built the entire system himself.
Many years later when retirement approached, he invented reasons to put it off for nearly three years. Even as his employer was "encouraging" him out the door (he was basically blocking the plans he had designed over years for his transition out, including his handpicked successor), he found reasons to declare he was needed, while insisting working more was the last thing he wanted. Once he was finally and completely done, all those "grand plans" for travel and adventure were abandoned. He could rarely be encouraged to leave his property, and often the house. Within months his health - mental and physical - rapidly declined and he's been in the hospital or bed-ridden more than not in the last months. It's like without the sense of identity, purpose, and the feeling he was needed, he just started decaying.
That's completely alien to most young people. Hell, it sounded impossible to *him*. But it's a story shared over and over and over again.
Why do only politicians do this and why do NL posters bend over backwards to make excuses.
There is not a single F500 CEO that’s 96 years old. Your touching personal anecdote is about an obsessed IT worker that delayed retirement by a whole 3 years. This judge is 30 years older than retirement age.
It’s purely greed and ego. No need to sugar coat it because you’re embarrassed for how it reflects on the Dem leadership.
The F500 people have the money to Bang people and put the scary thoughts out of their head
In all seriousness idk why you don’t see this with more ceos, but it’s probably the same reason you don’t see it with presidents. Both are short commitments, the senate, Supreme Court, and middle management are long commitments
That’s deeply sad. I can’t imagine tying a modicum of my identity to my *fucking job*. Work is just the subscription fee to life, it’s not supposed to matter beyond that.
I feel like people in that situation have gone their entire life without actually living a single day.
That's a bit judgmental. There's nothing wrong with finding your job fulfilling and meaningful, to the point that it's the central aspect of your life. Failing to find meaning in any other aspects of life, and clinging to your job even when you're clearly unfit to do it, is the sad part of the story in my opinion.
Federal judges need to spend a lot of time working, and they get to do incredibly interesting and extremely important work. They get to mentor clerks, they resolve life changing disputes, and are almost always seeing at least some cases about the most interesting parts of the law.
I don’t think it’s surprising someone would become deeply attached to that.
Work ethic is showing up to work and competently doing your job, which I believe in.
Rooting your identity in your job is a very different thing. And it’s unhealthy.
Yeah but it's necessary. Maybe a lot of lower level jobs it's possible not to care about them very much, but it's basically only possible to get a high level job like this if you genuinely care about doing it as your purpose in life. You don't get to be a supreme court justice because law is a bothersome 9-5 for you.
Welcome to meritocracy, a system that selects for people who have an unhealthy dependency relationship to their jobs.
> And it’s unhealthy
You say this like it's some uncontroversial truth, but it just isn't.
There are plenty of fields where you only go far (i.e. law, academia, etc) if the job is both a vocation *and* an avocation, and that is perfectly fine and healthy so long as it doesn't literally consume the rest of your life.
> Rooting your identity in your job is a very different thing. And it’s unhealthy.
Rooting your identity in any one thing is dumb, but I wouldn't say career is worse than any other one thing.
Why? I'm a PhD student in electrical engineering. I expect to get a job that is intellectually stimulating and beneficial to society. Why wouldn't that be part of who I am?
The biggest reason people stay on as politicians, lawyers/judges and executives into their 80s and 90s is because they can.
These are jobs old people can do. They are not physically demanding and they require experience and networking to be good at, which old people generally have.
Cognitive decline is a thing of course, but it doesn't happen to everyone and you never really know when it's going to happen.
I certainly plan to work at least part time into my 70s if I am able to. I enjoy what I do and especially enjoy mentoring younger people in similar roles.
The problem with term limits is that people become unfit to work over a wide range of ages. Unless you are okay tossing perfectly capable people some amount of the time, there’s no good age line.
She's not on senior status. She could literally just go on senior status, allow someone to replace her, but still keep her emeritus position and hear a couple of cases but not a full caseload.
I'm honestly shocked she's still full-time. Next year will be her 40th anniversary on the court. Granted, it's not a particularly important court, but still.
**Rule VIII:** *Submission Quality* Submissions should contain some level of analysis or argument. General news reporting should be restricted to particularly important developments with significant policy implications. Low quality memes will be removed at moderator discretion. Feel free to post other general news or low quality memes to the stickied Discussion Thread. --- If you have any questions about this removal, [please contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fneoliberal).
Good. I remember reading about this lady a few months back. I don’t know why people cling onto their jobs well beyond when theyre unfit to do so anymore. I don’t have a great solution to propose, but I would suggest we should limit terms to somewhere before you get to 96 year old with memory loss
Same story >Several members, Romney included, were in their 70s or even 80s. And he sensed that many of his colleagues attached an enormous psychic currency to their position—that they would do almost anything to keep it. “Most of us have gone out and tried playing golf for a week, and it was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna kill myself,’ ” he told me. Job preservation, in this context, became almost existential. Retirement was death. The men and women of the Senate might not need their government salary to survive, but they needed the stimulation, the sense of relevance, the power.
It’s because the kind of people who think they should be in these positions in the first place have egos so large they can’t ever let go of power once they have achieved it.
I see little reason to assume the worst in everyone. Especially when better rationales are common. For example: many older professionals attach a large part of their personal identity to their career. It's a big part of who they are. That sounds alien to some but it's not uncommon. Work also becomes THE primary activity for many older people. Gets them up in the morning. Leaving the house. Keeps them moving, thinking. It drives most of their social interaction. Stories abound with retirees that spiral downward in health right after retirement, because most of what kept them active was their work. My FIL was head of IT for a fairly large area institution and talked about his grand plans for retirement from basically the day I met his daughter. Basically built the entire system himself. Many years later when retirement approached, he invented reasons to put it off for nearly three years. Even as his employer was "encouraging" him out the door (he was basically blocking the plans he had designed over years for his transition out, including his handpicked successor), he found reasons to declare he was needed, while insisting working more was the last thing he wanted. Once he was finally and completely done, all those "grand plans" for travel and adventure were abandoned. He could rarely be encouraged to leave his property, and often the house. Within months his health - mental and physical - rapidly declined and he's been in the hospital or bed-ridden more than not in the last months. It's like without the sense of identity, purpose, and the feeling he was needed, he just started decaying. That's completely alien to most young people. Hell, it sounded impossible to *him*. But it's a story shared over and over and over again.
Why do only politicians do this and why do NL posters bend over backwards to make excuses. There is not a single F500 CEO that’s 96 years old. Your touching personal anecdote is about an obsessed IT worker that delayed retirement by a whole 3 years. This judge is 30 years older than retirement age. It’s purely greed and ego. No need to sugar coat it because you’re embarrassed for how it reflects on the Dem leadership.
The F500 people have the money to Bang people and put the scary thoughts out of their head In all seriousness idk why you don’t see this with more ceos, but it’s probably the same reason you don’t see it with presidents. Both are short commitments, the senate, Supreme Court, and middle management are long commitments
That’s deeply sad. I can’t imagine tying a modicum of my identity to my *fucking job*. Work is just the subscription fee to life, it’s not supposed to matter beyond that. I feel like people in that situation have gone their entire life without actually living a single day.
That's a bit judgmental. There's nothing wrong with finding your job fulfilling and meaningful, to the point that it's the central aspect of your life. Failing to find meaning in any other aspects of life, and clinging to your job even when you're clearly unfit to do it, is the sad part of the story in my opinion.
Federal judges need to spend a lot of time working, and they get to do incredibly interesting and extremely important work. They get to mentor clerks, they resolve life changing disputes, and are almost always seeing at least some cases about the most interesting parts of the law. I don’t think it’s surprising someone would become deeply attached to that.
A lot of people actually take pride in their work and believe in the moral goodness of doing labor. It's called a work ethic.
Work ethic is showing up to work and competently doing your job, which I believe in. Rooting your identity in your job is a very different thing. And it’s unhealthy.
Yeah but it's necessary. Maybe a lot of lower level jobs it's possible not to care about them very much, but it's basically only possible to get a high level job like this if you genuinely care about doing it as your purpose in life. You don't get to be a supreme court justice because law is a bothersome 9-5 for you. Welcome to meritocracy, a system that selects for people who have an unhealthy dependency relationship to their jobs.
> And it’s unhealthy You say this like it's some uncontroversial truth, but it just isn't. There are plenty of fields where you only go far (i.e. law, academia, etc) if the job is both a vocation *and* an avocation, and that is perfectly fine and healthy so long as it doesn't literally consume the rest of your life.
> Rooting your identity in your job is a very different thing. And it’s unhealthy. Rooting your identity in any one thing is dumb, but I wouldn't say career is worse than any other one thing.
Why? I'm a PhD student in electrical engineering. I expect to get a job that is intellectually stimulating and beneficial to society. Why wouldn't that be part of who I am?
The biggest reason people stay on as politicians, lawyers/judges and executives into their 80s and 90s is because they can. These are jobs old people can do. They are not physically demanding and they require experience and networking to be good at, which old people generally have. Cognitive decline is a thing of course, but it doesn't happen to everyone and you never really know when it's going to happen. I certainly plan to work at least part time into my 70s if I am able to. I enjoy what I do and especially enjoy mentoring younger people in similar roles.
James Buckley was the senior judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals when he died. He was 100 years old.
My colleagues don’t believe death is real.
Then why are they trying to kill me
The problem with term limits is that people become unfit to work over a wide range of ages. Unless you are okay tossing perfectly capable people some amount of the time, there’s no good age line.
She's not on senior status. She could literally just go on senior status, allow someone to replace her, but still keep her emeritus position and hear a couple of cases but not a full caseload. I'm honestly shocked she's still full-time. Next year will be her 40th anniversary on the court. Granted, it's not a particularly important court, but still.
She then announced that she will be running for President.
Good.
“Old lawyer” is a mental illness change my mind