61–70 of 127 posts
I wonder if those who oppose letting 15 year olds choose to work also oppose letting 15 year olds undergo certain cosmetic medical procedures, or letting 15 year olds vote. Typical “adult when it’s convenient” hypocrisy.
Such as cleft palate surgery for example? Those are often performed at around 1 year old. I am for those surgeries.
In 18th century London children were disposable labor: like cheaper, less durable horses. Children as young as 5 would work in match factories, dipping matchsticks into boiling sulfur by hand. Their lungs dissolved after a while, but then the factory owner didn’t pay their parents much for them anyway. Young children were the best chimney sweeps, too. London chimneys were a fucking mess, of course, built up rapidly a…
Let's admit it: The real issue, here, is that after fighting so hard to push out migrant labour, there's now a cheap labour shortage, and instead of fixing the migrant labour system to be fair, equitable, transparent, and sustainable, they're opting for child labour instead because, hey, at least they're good, red-blooded American child labourers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iowan here, this is actually a long-running talking point. Prior to the pandemic, Iowa was experiencing "full employment" with a 2.5% unemployment rate, which was among the lowest in the country prior to the pandemic spike. Some amount of churn is actually desirable as it means that employers can grow their operations and employees are finding opportunities. However, businesses in the manufacturing, agricultural, and…
Regarding schools you have both the university of Iowa and Iowa state. I feel like those are both good schools, I had a family member go to Iowa state's PHD program and it was one of their top choices(for their profession). As for letting children(teenagers in this case) work earlier(and longer) I feel conflicted. In some sense the mantra that has been pushed on the past 2-3 generations has been everyone has to get a…
Or have their parents dissuade them from ever getting into college. I think you could make a strong argument that the minimum full-time work age should be no lower than the age of being legally independent of the family.
The hybrid solution, which is very rarely seen, is a proper apprenticeship system where people are (a) doing real work and (b) continuing to learn during the process, but that is hard to organize.
I would also like to mention the UK briefly had the Education Mainenance Allowance, which was paid to kids 16-18 to give them an immediate economic incentive to stay in school.
In 18th century London children were disposable labor: like cheaper, less durable horses. Children as young as 5 would work in match factories, dipping matchsticks into boiling sulfur by hand. Their lungs dissolved after a while, but then the factory owner didn’t pay their parents much for them anyway. Young children were the best chimney sweeps, too. London chimneys were a fucking mess, of course, built up rapidly a…
Let's admit it: The real issue, here, is that after fighting so hard to push out migrant labour, there's now a cheap labour shortage, and instead of fixing the migrant labour system to be fair, equitable, transparent, and sustainable, they're opting for child labour instead because, hey, at least they're good, red-blooded American child labourers.
Laws that were intended to prevent children from working in dangerous factories should not apply to jobs in air conditioned offices.
Let children be children.
How about we let children and teenagers be people. They want to help their dads in their day to day lives, family and work are closely connected. Teenagers want their autonomy and their own money, they want to learn skills that they can use as adults. Instead we send dad somewhere away from his family to earn money and isolate teenagers from the real world and expect them to just get it at 18. Preventing children and teenagers from doing any actual growing up, infantilizing capable people with ambitions and a restless desire to learn and grow in the world, that is dysfunctional, not letting them hammer some nails or pick some apples or whatever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
16 and 17 year olds have even less of a risk assessment capacity than 18 year olds (worth noting that this faculty fully matures by around 25), but jobs where bad decisions have more impact aren't the place for people new to the workforce to cut their teeth; there's too much risk not just to themselves (which we're disregarding here; people should be fine making whatever stupid decision they want) but to the people a…
> which we're disregarding here; people should be fine making whatever stupid decision they want The entire reason the concept of “minors” exists is a social judgement that this rule has only limited applicability to people below a certain age.
I worked in heavy construction and roofing from 14 until I went to college - helped paid for quite a bit of it - I don't see a problem here. Nobody is forced to work, and you need to parents permission. Washington post thinks it is OK that 12 year olds, are old enough to consent to sex change operations, without their parents permission, but a 17 year old doing hard work with their parents permission is not OK?
Instead of creating opportunities to coerce children to work to keep the family alive maybe just directly help the family stay afloat…
I haven't been to Iowa since the late 1990s, but when I did visit Cedar Rapids I was struck by how nice everyone was. It was like going back to the 1960s: nobody swore, everyone was ridiculously polite, people seemed to have visible respect for engineers and other expert professionals. I'm struggling to reconcile all those nice people in Iowa with a state that is repealing basic child-labor protections. ETA: sorry, I…
Any demographers in here? I wonder if this has anything to do with the baby boomer generation all hitting retirement around now, and the incoming cohort being smaller than the retiring cohort.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iowan here, this is actually a long-running talking point. Prior to the pandemic, Iowa was experiencing "full employment" with a 2.5% unemployment rate, which was among the lowest in the country prior to the pandemic spike. Some amount of churn is actually desirable as it means that employers can grow their operations and employees are finding opportunities. However, businesses in the manufacturing, agricultural, and…
so is this an issue Iowans are concerned about or is this a synthetic issue that corporations are astroturfing? I can't see it being a very high priority imo even though I am sympathetic to 14 yr olds who want money.
This is compounded over time because as the empowered business interest of the party break down the social programs which were the product of a historic culture of community and combination, voters endure real deprivation and feel the pressure and anxiety from that deprivation. But instead of turning against the party and the business interests, they again find their antagonist in the culture. That is, everything has become so expensive and hostile and competitive not because of the growth of financialization and creeping capital but because of a decline in character.
These people are so saturated with culture issues that they cannot see how the very thing they are in bond with, business, is destroying the things they claim to care most about: families, communities and generosity. I am not being condescending when I say that they find themselves able to blaim skyrocketing medical costs on the fact that you cannot pay a doctor in eggs and butter anymore. (Something almost none of them ever did btw. Even in Montana that was a thing of the past by their time. But I have literally heard this argument and many of a similar for. on trips to my home state.)