I see this as going hand in hand with SCOTUS’ whims concerning Aff. Act.
The children Rethugs are looking to exploit and predominately Black and Brown. Sure, they’ll be some Whites thrown in the mix but not with consistency. Their Black and Brown cohorts will always be pushed into early working conditions, most’ll get used to it because what’s the alternative?? And if they don’t adapt to their brutal futures, there’s always the military.
For Rethugs, it’s problems solved.
ETA: Some States are pushing for more child marriages. It might be easier to “sell” to a 14 year old girl when her 34 year old husband complains about needing money.
“Opponents of child labor observe that when kids under 18 work long hours or do strenuous jobs, it can disrupt childhood development, interfere with their schooling and deprive them of the sleep they need.”
Important to recognize these are all features not bugs for the right. A working class that’s poorly educated, chronically fatigued, stressed, and generally not flourishing is a working class that is most easily and ruthlessly exploited. Since the GOP believes that membership in the working class means god hates you, all your suffering is only what you deserve. “Developing skills for the workplace” means learning how to suffer and be exploited.
Crimes against children drive me insanely angry.
I fantasize horrible punishments for people who torture children in factories and mines.
My late uncle was working in the PA coal mines at age 14.
Lied about his age was in the cavalry at age 15.
Was a doughboy in WW1.
Merchant Marine in WWII.
ETA: Oh yes, I nearly forgot. My mother went to work in a garment factory at age 14
Get 'em used to a lifetime of misery in shitty jobs and just be goddamned lucky that the oligarchs are willing to give you anything. If you wanted a lifetime of success, you should have been born rich. That’s on you.
We have entered a second guilded age. A handful of rich oligarchs vs the rest of us and right now the money is winning. By the way there are lots of good reasons not to let kids work that have nothing to do wiith all those woke things like being good ethical human beings. These days machines can handle manual labor better than children .
This push is part of the plan of the oligarchs to eliminate the rest of us. It is part and parcel with the looming changes to American society being pushed by the White Christian Nationalists who want to eliminate blacks, gays and Muslims first and then anybody who isn’t a member of the UP Faith Family Network. You know the network that doesn’t allow gays or blacks in significant roles.
These legislative assaults on social and economic progress in America are simply bizarre. No Health, Education, and Welfare oversight or funding, destabilized public education (creates non-standardized competency), no Affirmative Action, exemption from Minimum Wage, no abortion, lower child marriage age, gerrymander by skin color, and no immigration seem like an effort to turn childhood into indentured servitude and the expulsion of females from the workforce. Where would displaced adult workers go? What about their families’ incomes? Do they imagine regularly bussing kids out to the fields, groves, and slaughterhouses? Half-year school schedules? Let’s see some states establish safe Minimum Wage “youth work” programs before creating federal laws or allowing federal funds to support that disjointed and illogical approach to the national employment management strategy.
Actually, I can understand this movement. What better way to ease the tax burden on makers than to make the children of takers into super cheap makers for the real makers? C’mon. This is a simple common sense solution to a pervasive problem.
The party pushing against immigration switches to a push for child labor without any apparent recognition of what helped cause a tighter labor market for lower level jobs.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” ― Isaac Asimov
Pace Isaac Asimov the kind of idiocy we’re being drenched in these days doesn’t appear to have a clear concept of democracy one way or the other except it doesn’t seem to like it when it gets in the way.
