I'm not actually supportive of taking the franchise away from the old. However, it's an interesting concept given how badly (collectively) older voters have beh

I'm not actually supportive of taking the franchise away from the old. However, it's an interesting concept given how badly (collectively) older voters have behaved on matters of financial and environmental responsibility. Après moi, le déluge. I would point out that nearly everything you are raising about 'looking after the young' is about the idea of your own children and looking after yourselves. You've done the sleight of hand of shifting the topic to 'leaving money to, and looking after, your own kids'. What I'm talking about is the way older voters have collectively demanded more from society (generous governmental benefits) while collectively denying the same sort of benefits to younger people (there are way more small children growing up in poverty than old people in poverty). The mythology to which I refer is that older people are taking way more out of the retirement systems than they typically paid into it. So every time there's a thread like this people jump on and yell "what about my social security and all my tax contributions"; however, the books are not balanced - younger taxpayers carry older ones. I'm sure you have done the right thing by your own parents and children and I respect you for that. I am doing the right thing also. But there's a big difference between responsibility to ones own and civic responsibility, and a lot of old people have decided that bringing up the young is somehow a raw naked capitalist process while looking after the old should be done with the gentlest principles of socialistic redistribution.