this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Yes, and yes.
I think children should be free to focus on more important things than working.
Do you think we should send the kids back to the mines? Some of them might prefer to be out of school. What if they’re a self-employed mine owner?
They wouldn’t call them minors if they didn’t like it.
Based and perfect-response-pilled
I think there's a line somewhere and for me the line is whether the job is suitable for children. Like, doing chores around the house or on your grandparents' farm. Paper route riding a bike. I worked summers at a carnival, and at a pool when I was a bit older. Low physical labor, low responsibility, low customer interaction, family friendly environments. You're right it should never interfere with education.
If I saw a kid at the register of a fast food place or a store, I would turn around immediately and never return. Just leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.
Your example is very extreme. Having an after school part time job as you're growing up will prepare you for quite a bit, and set us apart from our peers that didn't work, and instead wasted their days after school or on the weekends. I take it you never worked growing up ? It's building essential life skills, not inhaling noxious fumes working 16 hr days in mines, this isn't the 1800's. I loved flipping burgers and making a paycheck at 15
I wasn't sure where I stood on this and read a lot of comments.
One thing that seems common is that many of those who worked young seem to think it made them better than the other kids somehow. They "wasted" their summer, while you built "essential life skills" unlike the person you're replying to, who did not? Are you still "set apart" from the person you replied to?
I might think getting thrown into the system at a younger age is the real waste of life. I've had a job since I was 15, but I really don't think it made me better than anyone.
It didn't make me "better" but from talking to people I went to college with (that didn't get jobs early), I'd definitely say I was more prepared for the workforce.
Also having money was dope and my fast food job was fun. I still enjoyed my life and summer outside of work, even more so because I could afford to do and get shit that my parents might not have been able to give me. It's not an all or nothing deal it's just a different life experience. I think it would be infantilizing to take the choice away from teenagers, though it is important to regulate it as shitty people will take advantage of it.
If by wasted days you mean cherished childhood memories then sure
I had a paper route when I was 12.
The work itself wasn't important but learning responsibility and the value of money was important.
It was the first time I did anything completely on my own without being directed in some way by a parent, teacher, coach, etc. Without that job and after-school/summer jobs I had when I was older there is a good chance I would have made poor financial decisions in early adulthood.
With 18 year-olds getting credit cards shoved in their face the day they show up for orientation, after probably signing up for student loans, it's probably a good idea for them to have earned money on their own for a while.
I don't understand the people down voting you. Having a job growing up taught me a lot of responsibility and how to manage my own money and act in a professional environment. Invaluable skills that you wouldn't get anywhere else, certainly not school
You can learn valuable skills like how to replace the roof of a house.
All this constant hyperbole for every single issue is exhausting. No one is defending sending 13 years olds out to replace someone's roof. We're talking about "unskilled" labor like taking orders, stocking shelves, running registers etc.
Immigrant children are already being exploited and are dying doing roofing work. You want to put children in the workforce but they would not be safe. If we had a pilot program in place and had some successful results that would be a different situation, but we have kids working 30 feet in the air with no safety gear. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/us/roofing-children-immigrants.html
Maybe you didn't know about this. There's kids all over the country working shitty jobs like cleaning meat packing plants at night-on their hands and knees scrubbing blood off the floor https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/nebraska-slaughterhouse-children-working-photos-labor-department
How do we get from where we are, to where you think we should be?
What’s your point? Those things are already illegal. The second article says so in the title.
No, you’re conflating a teenager taking a food order with illegally installing roofs or working in slaughterhouses or factories.
These jobs you are speaking of--washing cars, mowing lawns, even kids working in their parents' store--do you think that is the same as working for a multinational conglomerate handling food with no breaks and minimum wage?
No they're not the same. The multinational conglomerate is far better.
Chores for the neighbors and the paper route paid peanuts. Once I was old enough to work for the conglomerate (where I received food safety training) my pay after taxes more than doubled (a little more than minimum wage, which did, and does, exist), I started contributing to my future social security check, I received paid breaks, and there was a maximum amount of hours I was legally allowed to work.
Flipping burgers beats the hell out of lugging Sunday papers around the neighborhood or knocking on doors to mow lawns in the summer heat or shovel driveways in the freezing cold. Back then I counted the days until I was old enough for a "real" job.
This is what I don't understand about all the angry people in this thread. Of course it's not okay to have children working in like fucking coal mines and not regulating the hours they can work and the pay you can give them. Of course that's not cool and should be stopped. But the people doing that (and there are many) aren't usually the ones doing it out in the open in a fast food restaurant.
Right?
Learning things a little at a time, when the stakes are low/non-existent is the way to go. From early teens to partway through college when you get an off campus apartment you can learn how to apply for a job, how to interview, responsibility, managing your money, responsible credit use, professionalism, bill paying. All this over the course of years, with a support system when you make mistakes (hopefully).
I guess some people think you should just have all that dropped on you like a ton of bricks the day after you get a diploma.
Well, I'm not fucking going down there.
First of all, I generally agree with you that child labor such as in the OP is bad.
That being said, responding to people who had positive experiences with it in their own lives by jumping directly to sending then to the mines is absolutely fucking insane. They are not the same thing.
Sometimes I read comments online and initially think they're sarcastic but then realise the person's serious and flexing way above their capacity, usually by straw manning. And here's one of those moments...
facepalm
About as much as you think the police should be shutting down lemonade stands.
"Freedom" to do what you want them to and nothing more, not even to earn it over summer break or learn the value of money.
Fuck 'em, just wait until they get out of highschool at 18 before they ever even see real money and have no idea how any of it works, who the predators are, and what the risk is.
Why is this worse than the literal same thing at a younger age?
They completely missed an entire part of my initial comment that started this tangent.
Literally, it was all my idea and what I wanted to do.
"Children should be free to focus on things."
12 year old me: "Cool! I want to work at the local fish and chip store and they already said it's okay, pleeeeease?."
"NO!!!!"
This place is insane sometimes. In their heads they're thinking children being forced into labor, obviously that's not what we're talking about here. I had various gigs I did as a kid to earn some extra money, snow shoveling in the winter, mowing in the summer, I'm doing much better financially than my peers. Most of the guys I was in the military with were losing their whole paychecks just days after getting them, never having that much money in their lives. No one ever taught them and they never developed the skills on their own.
Say what you will, but I don't think there's anything wrong with letting a kid work in an entrepreneur kind of fashion or in limited capacity like what you did on weekends, summer break, etc.
You can't raise someone into an adult if you hand them the keys for the first time on their 18th birthday. Most of us learn by doing and it's best to get the hands on experience.