President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

One thing that gets lost on people in these discussions. ... Nobody ever wanted children working in coal mines. It's not like 120 years ago, people were like, "This is a good thing."

Children worked out of necessity. If those kids didn't work, they didn't eat. Their families might not eat. A lot of people in the U.S. were dirt poor.

Leglislation doesn't magically change those kinds of realities. The reason child labor lessened to such an extent in this country wasn't because people suddenly became more enlightened. ... or because someone passed a law saying, "Don't do that." It was the enormous wealth that was created in this country last century that made it so that children didn't have to work and could stay in school and do all the things that people always want for children.

The fact that there has been an uptick in child labor in recent years is indicative of a country where an underclass (with economic distress) is growing. It doesn't matter what laws Arkansas passes. If we hadn't have created such a mess of ourselves economically, you wouldn't see so many teens working long shifts in industrial jobs.

And the result of laws that got rid of working papers, etc. would actually be that kids could have paper routes and jobs at McDonald's -- which can be very beneficial to them and to the rest of us -- without a state government being involved.

 

They paid them (a little) because that is what it took to get their labor. We all look at those pictures and it's sad. My point was that it was sad back then, too. The reasons it was happening weren't along the lines of simplistic narratives people have today. It wasn't because people were less enlightened, or that we just didn't have enough regulation. ... or that people who owned coal mines were forcing kids to work for little pay. Those photos kind of show the economic reality of much of the history of the world. ... and the thing that changed was that we became much wealthier, not that we somehow magically legislated reality away.