Is age discrimination always wrong? How do we take people's age into account without being ageist? These are the questions we’re asking this week, in an episode called “Should All Ages Be Equal?”

Clearly we don’t want to discriminate, say, against 50-something Brits when it comes to hiring. (I’d be out of a job at中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播!) But at the same time, we equally clearly don’t want to let a five-year-old drive a car, a 15-year-old buy a bottle of whisky, or a 40-year-old compete against kids in a spelling bee. So how do we draw the lines? And are we currently drawing them in a fair way?

Take the example of voting age. As it stands now, some twenty-five-year-old who knows nothing about politics gets to vote, but a smart 17-year-old who’s super plugged in doesn’t have any formal say in the future of their country. Why not?

One argument is that it’s onlytemporarily不公平的17岁。他们要做的就是等到十八岁，然后就可以投票了。每个人都必须遵守同样的规则;我们所有人最终都有机会投票，在完全相同的年龄。So the systemisfair.

But is it really? Is it right to discriminate against 17-year-olds, just because we discriminate against all of themin the same way? We wouldn’t say that about age discrimination in hiring (“It’s OK—we reject all the fifty-somethings”).

This problem becomes clearer when we think about wages. In some countries, the minimum wage for teenage workers is lower than the minimum age for adults. So you can get less money for doing exactly the same job as someone else, just because you’re a bit younger. How is that fair?

一个理由可能是年轻人不需要那么多钱:他们大部分都由父母照顾。但并不是所有的年轻人都这么幸运。即使你有一个舒适的家庭环境，这也不一定是你应该拿更少薪水的足够好的理由。如果一些25岁的年轻人搬回去和父母同住，这个人的薪水也应该被削减吗?

None of this, of course, is to say that we should treat people of all agesexactlythe same. For example, we don’t want 8-year-olds getting sent to work in factories; child labor laws are essential. But once someone is legally entitled to work, shouldn’t they be paid the same as everyone else?

Another justification for paying people differently based on age might be that a 15-year-old isn’t going to be as good a worker as an 18-year-old. Their prefrontal cortex isn’t as developed, so they’re going to be less mature, less reliable, and less resourceful.

Statistically speaking, that may be true, but it doesn’t mean every 18-year-old is going to be super-reliable either. Should some flakey 18-year-old really get paid more than a competent, responsible 15-year-old? It seems arbitrary to pay the 15-year-old less just because they’re a few years younger.

一般来说，似乎有些法律决定了我们在什么年龄被允许做什么，对他们来说有点武断。你可以在一个年龄工作，在另一个年龄开车，在第三个年龄参军——你仍然可能不能投票或喝酒(合法)，这取决于你生活在哪个国家。

虽然我们可以消除系统中的一些任意性，但为了实际目的，我们仍然需要在某个地方画线。一旦我们把它们画出来，它们至少对每个人都是平等的。所以这肯定比什么都没有好。(不用说，当涉及到同意年龄时，这样的台词尤为重要。)

But is that really the best we can do, when it comes to age-related fairness?

Our guest on this week’s episode—Juliana Bidadanure from Stanford University—will definitely have things to say about that. She’s just published a book on the subject, calledJustice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals. I’m looking forward to hearing from her if there’s a way to prevent age discrimination and let 50-something Brits hang on to their jobs!

Photo byPaolo BendandionUnsplash