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Comment by disordinary | Hacker News Reader

The average age of someone who is voting to leave is above 60, the average age of someone who is voting to stay is below 35. The older generation have voted for something that the younger generation did not want but are now stuck with. They have voted away their future for short term gains.

The sooner the baby boomers are all retired the better.

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This becomes an interesting problem. What is the rational approach for a democratically smaller group which has the majority of future earning potential and is better educated ? (this holds for both the young and also for London). Do you leave? Do you back out of wider society and opt for minimal regulation and keep to your own sub groups? Do you grin and bear it as an obligation? You can wait - but the waiting period risks your current advantages.

Yes it is something that is quite interesting. There is a large disconnect between the majority of baby boomers and the majority of gen-x, y, etc. Baby Boomers are largely climate change deniers for instance.

Unfortunately, people who are making decisions right now aren't thinking long term. They are thinking about maintaining their own lifestyles despite saddling future generations with debt, climate problems, etc.

You leave while you still can. Being a citizen means you can always go back, so leaving keeps your options open.

You mean "dead" ? You can vote while being retired right ?

They still vote when they're retired.

Of course they do, but if the politicians have retired then no one is pushing their selfish and short sighted conservative agenda.

Trump is 70, Clinton is 68, and both are well past the US retirement age. You should fully expect that until the boomer generation dies major candidates will just get older (look at Mccain, and Romney was also past retirement age when he ran for president (65). Obama was fairly unique in being so young at just 46. The trend is retirees run for president, and retirees vote for them.

Even the house and senate reflect these trends. The average age of a senator went from ~53 in 1980 to ~63 today. The house went from 49 to 57. For over a century the average was stagnant between 50 and 55 and only now is it going off the chart.

These people simply do not retire. They will die in office with dementia but they are certainly not stepping down and their voting base will have nothing less than their own in office until they are all in the ground.

It is a sad state of affairs, a lot of similar things happen in companies where it's hard to advance as positions of authority are locked out by people who have held it since they were given the opportunity at 30.

It's an unfortunate side effect of increased healthcare and life expectancy.

Politics in the US is definitely an old boys club (just look at all the political families) fortunately other countries aren't as bad.

To be fair they spinned up a huge populistic propaganda machine focused on the UK youth. While i like the idea that these numbers say something, they probably dont.

They aren't even getting short term gains (well maybe they beleived the idea that EU fees would go to NHS).

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