(07-12-2024, 02:41 PM)DJC link Wrote:No, they’re not outliers.  Golda Meir was 71 when she became Israel’s PM, Indira Gandhi was 63 when she began her second stint as India’s PM, Margaret Thatcher was 54 when she became UK’s PM, Charles de Gaulle was 68 when elected as France’s President, Fidel Castro was 33 when he became Cuba’s PM, Xi Jinping is 73, William Pitt the younger was UK PM at 24, Queen Elizabeth was 96, Pope Francis is 87, Gabriel Attal was France’s PM at 35, Kim Jong Un became North Korea’s supreme leader at 29, and there are so many more leaders, good and bad, outside your age range.

Age is largely irrelevant to leadership.  Intelligence, principles, decisiveness, morality, knowledge, ruthlessness, compassion, etc are far more important.

(07-12-2024, 11:55 PM)Thryleon link Wrote:I think the meat of my post has been glossed over by the ages.  The politicians DJC listed actually support my point.  Most of them lived through the similar hardships (or more challenging) that gave them unique experience.  Ignoring the antiquities, autocrats and royals (non genuine examples of people groomed specifically for those roles by other leaders of people) you have a generation of leaders mentioned who lived through world wars, great depression and faced legitimate relative hardships to the common person.  Roof over heads, food on the table, health care, education for kids and work.  We are facing a bunch of silver spoon career politicians who grew up in an era where the great dream of society was much more freely and easier forged.  The kids today are looking down the barrel of repeated adversity, climate issues created by an exploding global population, better educated, with tougher propositions and with better incomes but finding it tougher to get to a place of prosperity than any generation that has come before it in such an affluent position.


How can those leaders relate to these people?  Albanese grew up in commission housing.  Yep, do that today and you face a lifetime of poverty if you can escape that cycle at all.  Will they own a house in future? Afford health care?  No.  The guy I was speaking to yesterday at work lives with his partner and child, was relieved to be able to leave the lease at the house he is renting for almost $500 a week in Caroline Springs because the vendor and real estate agent have finally arrived at the idea its unfit for habitation. He works in technology and has a good well paying job,  his Mrs works and their attempt to save a dollar by moving out ended up being spent in commuting but now he's back to searching for a place to live in with resources income wise that albanese would have dreamt of yet somehow can't make the ends meet properly to afford housing.  Ignore the 70 year old returning to university for a moment.  The anecdotal people in their 70's I know of are all on heart and blood pressure medication and spending more time trying to work out how to navigate the technologies at hand and saying how bad at it they all are that is what drives every day life for the majority of young people.  That's not to say they aren't useful because that seems to be the inference.  They can be advisors ministers and what not but in the main role? They come across as unrelatable.  Even if they have the traits to lead, it's a sermon of out of touch leadership.  Albanese is 20 years older than me. His time growing up was remarkably different to mine.  Let alone those 10 years my junior like my work colleague who is trapped in a rent cycle with a dual income household and wondering where they can move to in order to soften that blow.

The decisions being made directly impact the kids struggling today but it comes from boomers who have the luxury of retiring going to uni and flexing into another space because they paid their house off 30 years ago and don't understand what having a mortgage until your retire looks like and then wondering what retirement might look like if you retire at all. 

That's ok. Those leaders will get their almost half a million a year pension. 

The revolution is coming folks.  Guys like my colleague are not the minority they're the majority.

(07-12-2024, 11:55 PM)Thryleon link Wrote:I think the meat of my post has been glossed over by the ages.  The politicians DJC listed actually support my point.  Most of them lived through the similar hardships (or more challenging) that gave them unique experience.  Ignoring the antiquities, autocrats and royals (non genuine examples of people groomed specifically for those roles by other leaders of people) you have a generation of leaders mentioned who lived through world wars, great depression and faced legitimate relative hardships to the common person.  Roof over heads, food on the table, health care, education for kids and work.  We are facing a bunch of silver spoon career politicians who grew up in an era where the great dream of society was much more freely and easier forged.  The kids today are looking down the barrel of repeated adversity, climate issues created by an exploding global population, better educated, with tougher propositions and with better incomes but finding it tougher to get to a place of prosperity than any generation that has come before it in such an affluent position.


How can those leaders relate to these people?  Albanese grew up in commission housing.  Yep, do that today and you face a lifetime of poverty if you can escape that cycle at all.  Will they own a house in future? Afford health care?  No.  The guy I was speaking to yesterday at work lives with his partner and child, was relieved to be able to leave the lease at the house he is renting for almost $500 a week in Caroline Springs because the vendor and real estate agent have finally arrived at the idea its unfit for habitation. He works in technology and has a good well paying job,  his Mrs works and their attempt to save a dollar by moving out ended up being spent in commuting but now he's back to searching for a place to live in with resources income wise that albanese would have dreamt of yet somehow can't make the ends meet properly to afford housing.  Ignore the 70 year old returning to university for a moment.  The anecdotal people in their 70's I know of are all on heart and blood pressure medication and spending more time trying to work out how to navigate the technologies at hand and saying how bad at it they all are that is what drives every day life for the majority of young people.  That's not to say they aren't useful because that seems to be the inference.  They can be advisors ministers and what not but in the main role? They come across as unrelatable.  Even if they have the traits to lead, it's a sermon of out of touch leadership.  Albanese is 20 years older than me. His time growing up was remarkably different to mine.  Let alone those 10 years my junior like my work colleague who is trapped in a rent cycle with a dual income household and wondering where they can move to in order to soften that blow.

The decisions being made directly impact the kids struggling today but it comes from boomers who have the luxury of retiring going to uni and flexing into another space because they paid their house off 30 years ago and don't understand what having a mortgage until your retire looks like and then wondering what retirement might look like if you retire at all. 

That's ok. Those leaders will get their almost half a million a year pension. 

The revolution is coming folks.  Guys like my colleague are not the minority they're the majority.

(07-13-2024, 12:22 AM)Lods link Wrote:I agree with a lot of what you say there Thry. I will make the point though that a lot of young folks (non-boomers) who didn't grow up in the 50s and  60s tend to have a bit of a rose coloured view of our life and struggles.
If you think it was all beer and skittles think  again.
They weren't all Happy Days.