It seems to me that there is a large discrepancy between the age at which you are given the responsibilities (and punishments) of an adult and the age at which you gain the privileges of an adult. I was always told that with privilege, comes responsibility. This just doesn’t seem to be the case:
age 16- given the privilege to drive an automobile, able to be tried and convicted as an adult for some crimes
age 17- no aditional privilages given, able to be put to death for a crime
age 18- given the right to vote, able to be forced into the military–posible death for your country
age 21- given the privilege to carry a handgun, given the privilage to drink alcohol
age 25- allowed to rent a car
age 35-40(*)-allowed to run for executive office
Is it just me, or is this system all out of joint? I think that if you are goung to be treated like an adult, you should be able to reap ALL the benifits thereof. Not a little sprinkling of responsibility here, a privilege or two there–If I can be forced to die for my country, I should be allowed a chance to lead it as well.
Or at the very least, I should be allowed to partake of any intoxicating substances that I choose–or be able to rent a fsking car!!
I propose that there should be one age at which you become an adult. Before that age you receive no privileges or punsihments of an adult, and after you have reached that age, you recive all of them.
*unsure of the exact age, could someone help here?
I fixed the title. If you preview your thread, everything after the quotes disappears, unless you use the special characters to do the quotes. Just a little Vbb quirk.
I agree with you that the system is screwed up. There’s no reason why 18 year olds can fight and die for our country but can’t celebrate in a toast of it.
That being said, I disagree with your statement “I think that if you are goung to be treated like an adult, you should be able to reap ALL the benifits thereof.”
There are different degrees to being an adult just like there are different degrees to being a kid. It’s why you had a 10 o’clock curfew when you were 15 but it got bumped up to midnight at 17.
BTW, it’s 25 years for a house member, 30 years for a senator, and 35 years for president.
I think you’ve got a point, especially about the running-for-office age limit (why not let the voters decide?) OTOH, I think making the drinking and driving ages the same is asking for trouble.
I happen to agree wholeheartedly, but only if you’ll look at my thread on “Juvenile Justice” you will see why. Why is it that we are now attempting to throw 13 year old children into adult correction facilities yet not even let them drive, vote or smoke a cigarette? At some point we decided that 18 or 21 was the age of adulthood. We should stick with it. And we shouldn’t keep moving the lines on our own children. Children should not be held accountable for their actions the same as adults. The current trend has children suffering all the consequences but not reaping any of the benefits of being an adult.
The all or nothing camp is basically saying that “once you are ready for A, you are automatically ready for B through Z.” To me, that argument seems silly on its face. I will not go so far as to say that the lines currently drawn are automatically the correct ones, but it seems ridiculous to equate being ready to drive a car is equivalent to being ready to run the country. Privileges and responsibilities are doled out gradually because development is gradual, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Furthermore, those three areas are not always or even often in step with each other.
At 18, (younger in most states?) you can get married and have children, but can’t buy a bottle of champagne for your honeymoon. But you can drink. It’s the sale of alcohol that’s illegal.
Illogical laws abound. In NYC, a law requires anyone working where noise exceeds 8db (I’m not exactly sure how many decibles) MUST wear protective earmuffs. Another law says, a truck’s back-up beep must be 10db (again, not sure, but it’s a bigger number). Yet another law says you are not allowed to wear anything over your ears when driving. A trucker backing up is forced to break at least 1 of these laws.
15 db is a whisper, and a chainsaw is 110 db, so i think that if your numbers would be x 10 they would work. And yes those laws are totally illogical…Yeah…can’t think of anything intelligent to add…
At least in some parts of western Europe, the drinking/driving age laws are reversed. There’s no real drinking age (oh, it’s 14 for beer and wine and 16 for liquor, I think, but it’s widely disregarded) but the driving age is 18 and is strictly enforced. This means that by the time kids learn to drive, they already have several years of experience with drinking. They have learned their limits, learned the effects of alcohol on their reflexes, and (most importantly) drinking is no big deal.
I think this is a far more sensible way of doing things than the inverse, so popular in USA.