121–130 of 130 posts
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It's not for me to say how they'd vote, if they're working they should be able to vote for someone to represent their interests.
They should be able to vote with their feet and not work, or work somewhere else.
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Do you think they would vote against be allowed to work? I always wanted jobs as a teen so I could do stuff- I wanted to be independent as do most teens I'd imagine.
I don’t know how old you are (over 40?) but I suspect there’s a generational gap here. In the 1990s and before, in my part of the US anyway, a teenager without a job was seen as lazy or entitled. Sometime after the mobile internet happened kids stopped working. They stopped driving cars and that was a big motivator for work. There was a lot of money flying around and parents just started handing spending money to the…
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They should be able to vote with their feet and not work, or work somewhere else.
That's not a compelling argument to prevent them from voting. Their paychecks are taxed, let them vote.
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That's not a compelling argument to prevent them from voting. Their paychecks are taxed, let them vote.
Suffrage isn't granted based on paying taxes. Is it anywhere? Paying taxes is simply the cost of living in a society, but I don't think that paying them should grant you a voice any more than buying a company's products gives you a vote in who their CEO is. Foreign nationals pay taxes on their income, but they aren't allowed to vote. As soon as kids are old enough to buy things from stores, they are paying sales taxe…
I am interested in hearing more opinions about why children should specifically not be allowed to vote though, these always tend to devolve to "kids are dumb" or "aren't mature enough to make that kind of decision" but under that reasoning I don't think they should be working fields, driving cars, playing full-contact sports, etc... what kids can and can not do seems to be dictated by the economy and ruling class more than what they're actually capable of or what's good for them.
I spent my summers from ages 14-18 picking shade tobacco (for cigar wrappers) in Connecticut's Tobacco Valley. I'm not sure if it was state law but you couldn't start until you were 14. This was during summer vacation when school was out - but it used to be such an important local industry that if the crop was late they would delay the start of the school year so kids could keep picking. Boys and girls could both wor…
Were you paid a full adult salary? With benefits? If not, this is a harmful labor practice because you were undercutting the wages of full adult workers. In the same way that prison labor and undocumented workers undercut pay of adult workers, so too do child laborers. Neither are really able to report labor and safety violations, neither are able to decide not to work, and neither are paid a proper living wage. Neit…
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Were you paid a full adult salary? With benefits? If not, this is a harmful labor practice because you were undercutting the wages of full adult workers. In the same way that prison labor and undocumented workers undercut pay of adult workers, so too do child laborers. Neither are really able to report labor and safety violations, neither are able to decide not to work, and neither are paid a proper living wage. Neit…
I don't think anyone had any illusions about "teaching" us anything other than the value of hard work. We made minimum wage, no benefits (what does that even mean for a kid, we all had health insurance through our parents). I was able to save up for a few summers and buy myself a new computer (a 486SX!), which ultimately led me to where I am today. Seasonal agricultural work like this has been done by kids for genera…
Rivers caught fire and the air was toxic for generations too. Historical precedent isn't particularly compelling IMO.
> I don't think we were stealing jobs from adults.
If they weren't going to find involuntary workers (kids, prison slaves - the correct term as of course slavery is permitted in the US as punishment for a crime under the 14th amendment) - they would have had to raise the amount they were paying voluntary workers until someone took the job. Or it wouldn't get done.
This is how leverage in employment works. To have a free market for labor and accurate pricing, you need to have voluntary participation. Involuntary participation puts all the pricing power in the hands of capital.
> They started flying in seasonal workers from Puerto Rico and then Jamaica.
This doesn't have to be a permitted practice re: Jamaica. In a very real way it's the job of DOL and USCIS to prevent it. After all, they already do labor conditions and prevailing wage determinations for specialty workers. Why not farm workers? And there simply aren't enough people in Puerto Rico to change the balance of power.
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>I’d say if we mandated a living wage this problem would likely sort itself out. The minimum wage is already a "living wage"; people's expectations just keep getting higher and higher. Someone on the minimum wage is eating much better than somebody in Africa, and can afford much better accommodation (clean water, a roof over their head, albeit maybe a shared room). So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why…
> The minimum wage is already a "living wage" We're not going to agree that $7.25 is a living wage. In 1970 it was the equivalent of $12 today meanwhile house prices across the US exploded. > So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why does an American deserve more? If anything, if the world was fair then the American minimum wage would be lower, with that money diverted to people in underdeveloped places lik…
No you can't. Wealth transfers move wealth between people, they don't create wealth. If it did then raising the minimum wage to $100 would make everyone wealthy, but economics/physics doesn't work like that. And in the same manner that mandating a $100 minimum wage would make everyone worse off due to heavily distorting the market, mandating a $20 minimum wage makes everyone worse off to a smaller degree.
>The whole point of higher productivity is that everyone should benefit
Productivity comes from investment in tools and technology; from _capital_. If you take a modern worker back in time 100 years they won't be as productive as today, because they don't have access to the same tools, equipment, technology etc. That's why the people who make such investments deserve to reap the rewards of what they sowed. If we take all that and give it to workers who've done nothing but show up, then nobody has incentive to invest in further increasing productivity and productivity growth stagnates.
Really what you're saying is people are entitled to the fruits of other people's efforts just for virtue of being born, which is an incredibly entitled way of looking at things.
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Were you paid a full adult salary? With benefits? If not, this is a harmful labor practice because you were undercutting the wages of full adult workers. In the same way that prison labor and undocumented workers undercut pay of adult workers, so too do child laborers. Neither are really able to report labor and safety violations, neither are able to decide not to work, and neither are paid a proper living wage. Neit…
>I’d say if we mandated a living wage this problem would likely sort itself out. The minimum wage is already a "living wage"; people's expectations just keep getting higher and higher. Someone on the minimum wage is eating much better than somebody in Africa, and can afford much better accommodation (clean water, a roof over their head, albeit maybe a shared room). So if a person on Africa can live on much less, why…
In practice, the American minimum wage being higher diverts more money to people in underdeveloped places like Africa. Both because it directly makes them more price-competitive in low-end, easily offshorable, labor, and because distribution downward from capital to labor in the US for the jobs that can’t be offshored increases consumption and imports.
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Depends on the work. Manning the cash register at the family store or restaurant isn't the same as working in fields and factories. I don't mind my kids doing the former at a young age. The latter - hell no.
I'm going to guess you grew up in a city? I wouldn't have a problem with a kid of mine "working in fields", provided the hours are reasonable. Picking strawberries, outside, with friends their same age, a few hours at a time, would be great for them. I would go as far to say that its fun. I would prefer that over them having to interact with a bunch of asshole strangers, alone, trapped inside all day.
Hell no if it's paid employment on some stranger's farm, or an industrial feedlot.
Reasonable hours is something that goes without saying. Study, chores, play, work - in that order - is how kids should be taught to prioritize their time. They're your children, not your free labor.
Not sure where I grew up has anything to do with it other than that my examples didn't take into account some rural edge cases (family farms constitute a tiny sliver of all farming). The context of the work, and how dangerous it is, is what's important.
I grew up in North Carolina in the late 1980's. There was tobacco all around and I knew many classmates that picked tobacco from at least age 14. Some people in the thread are remembering their own experiences fondly. I can't remember any of my friends saying anything positive about picking tobacco. I don't think they made much money either. As for not being able to buy cigarettes, everyone I knew that wanted to smok…