5 ms·

But what if the kids were working instead, as apprentices? It would provide the same benefit and potentially earn the family more money as well, instead of cost

But what if the kids were working instead, as apprentices? It would provide the same benefit and potentially earn the family more money as well, instead of cost them money in the form of property taxes.

paulmd 10y ago
Why not coal miners? I mean, children are just training on what could hopefully be a life-long profession. /s No, the job market doesn't need more low-skilled workers who can be paid sub-minimum-wage (as such workers historically have been and inevitably will be afforded by the people who make such suggestions). Prison labor, mentally ill people, and teenage schoolkids are already used to undercut adult labor in such roles.
- marknutter 10y ago
  > No, the job market doesn't need more low-skilled workers who can be paid sub-minimum-wage Hm, notice how I didn't say "low-skilled workers". Did you mean to reply to a different comment?
  - paulmd 10y ago
    Children are inherently low-skilled laborers, lacking even a minimal high-school education. And many high-school educations are minimal indeed, in the South or the Midwest. They are low-skilled laborers by any definition you choose. Someone who is learning to weld at age 14 will usually not accrue even a secondary education let alone college. Sorry, just a fact of how "alternate education" programs turn out in real life. Having been to a top high school, everyone I know who went through those programs is now working at a gas station. If you think it will be different this time, please explain how. Families should not be forced to rely on child labor as income, full stop. We tried that and it had a whole raft of negative consequences, as do the minor initiatives we've made into labor of various classes of teenage-youth-labor/mentally-disabled labor/prison labor. They are always used to undercut wages of normal-skill labor - we've tried it in the past, we're trying it in the present, and pretty soon instead of the 2-income family you are talking about the 6-income family - particularly now that labor utilization is on a permanent downward trend because of automation. The work that is available for such people tends to be of the $1/hr kind.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      I learned to weld at age 17, on the job in an apprenticeship. My colleagues and I are the highest paid metal fabricators in the state, our company is good to work for, we do some big and interesting work, we take on multiple new apprentices each year, some as young as 16. Not everyone is cutout to be a university graduate going on to a white-collar career. I was expelled from high school because I didn't fit the mold. Leaving school and going in to a trade was the best thing I could have done at the time. I feel many young people are under-served by school. They don't have the drive / desire to do uni and school didn't teach them anything useful, like basic financial management, how to lay a brick, or fix a leaking tap.
      - paulmd 10y ago
        I mean, I totally approve of the concept of vocational training. The thing is that like most internships it undercuts actual workers in practice. It's not just the intern getting coffee while observing work as intended, it's actual business work that displaces an apprentice or secretary (illegally, but never enforced). If you mandated and enforced that such workers must be paid the full wages of their trained counterparts (or close) then I'd be highly in favor of it. But that's not the motivation of the people who make such proposals - they're looking to undercut trained workers without any sort of mitigation for the damage to wages. The NLRB has been forced into a deadlock for more than a decade against just such a possibility. This SCOTUS nomination lockout is nothing new. On the large scale you get our current education system, where people take out big loans to get trained as a teacher and then usually burn out in 3-5 years and take a job at Starbucks. And you especially get mentally ill people who work a register for $2 an hour and displace an able worker who needs to feed their family. There's no excuse for that, we are a modern society and we can take care of our disadvantaged as well as paying a living wage. People should not be forced to rely on the mentally ill or child laborers to make ends meet, that's simply unacceptable in modern society. We honestly don't even need every abled worker anymore, let alone the mentally disabled.
        meric 10y ago
        You'd rather tell a disabled worker he is worse than useless because if he wanted to work he'd be displacing an able bodied person. If a disabled person wants to work despite being given benefits I think they should be allowed to. Perhaps the only reason he is having to accept a lower wage in the first place is because of his appearance. (People afraid of someone who doesn't look normal) which speaks nothing about his effectiveness or capability. You're preventing people from joining in society, because they are different. That's some prejudice and discrimination.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
Or what if kids were allowed to try out a few different areas of employment for extended periods. Where I work we have local high school students come in for 1 week of 'work experience', but for most of them it takes a good week of training to get them up to speed on how our processes work. If they could stay for longer it would make them more useful to us and they'd also learn a lot more and have more of any idea of what it's actually like to work 38hr weeks. Maybe they could even be paid. I believe school could do so much more.

paulmd 10y ago

Why not coal miners? I mean, children are just training on what could hopefully be a life-long profession. /s No, the job market doesn't need more low-skilled workers who can be paid sub-minimum-wage (as such workers historically have been and inevitably will be afforded by the people who make such suggestions). Prison labor, mentally ill people, and teenage schoolkids are already used to undercut adult labor in such roles.

marknutter 10y ago
> No, the job market doesn't need more low-skilled workers who can be paid sub-minimum-wage Hm, notice how I didn't say "low-skilled workers". Did you mean to reply to a different comment?
- paulmd 10y ago
  Children are inherently low-skilled laborers, lacking even a minimal high-school education. And many high-school educations are minimal indeed, in the South or the Midwest. They are low-skilled laborers by any definition you choose. Someone who is learning to weld at age 14 will usually not accrue even a secondary education let alone college. Sorry, just a fact of how "alternate education" programs turn out in real life. Having been to a top high school, everyone I know who went through those programs is now working at a gas station. If you think it will be different this time, please explain how. Families should not be forced to rely on child labor as income, full stop. We tried that and it had a whole raft of negative consequences, as do the minor initiatives we've made into labor of various classes of teenage-youth-labor/mentally-disabled labor/prison labor. They are always used to undercut wages of normal-skill labor - we've tried it in the past, we're trying it in the present, and pretty soon instead of the 2-income family you are talking about the 6-income family - particularly now that labor utilization is on a permanent downward trend because of automation. The work that is available for such people tends to be of the $1/hr kind.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    I learned to weld at age 17, on the job in an apprenticeship. My colleagues and I are the highest paid metal fabricators in the state, our company is good to work for, we do some big and interesting work, we take on multiple new apprentices each year, some as young as 16. Not everyone is cutout to be a university graduate going on to a white-collar career. I was expelled from high school because I didn't fit the mold. Leaving school and going in to a trade was the best thing I could have done at the time. I feel many young people are under-served by school. They don't have the drive / desire to do uni and school didn't teach them anything useful, like basic financial management, how to lay a brick, or fix a leaking tap.
    - paulmd 10y ago
      I mean, I totally approve of the concept of vocational training. The thing is that like most internships it undercuts actual workers in practice. It's not just the intern getting coffee while observing work as intended, it's actual business work that displaces an apprentice or secretary (illegally, but never enforced). If you mandated and enforced that such workers must be paid the full wages of their trained counterparts (or close) then I'd be highly in favor of it. But that's not the motivation of the people who make such proposals - they're looking to undercut trained workers without any sort of mitigation for the damage to wages. The NLRB has been forced into a deadlock for more than a decade against just such a possibility. This SCOTUS nomination lockout is nothing new. On the large scale you get our current education system, where people take out big loans to get trained as a teacher and then usually burn out in 3-5 years and take a job at Starbucks. And you especially get mentally ill people who work a register for $2 an hour and displace an able worker who needs to feed their family. There's no excuse for that, we are a modern society and we can take care of our disadvantaged as well as paying a living wage. People should not be forced to rely on the mentally ill or child laborers to make ends meet, that's simply unacceptable in modern society. We honestly don't even need every abled worker anymore, let alone the mentally disabled.
      - meric 10y ago
        You'd rather tell a disabled worker he is worse than useless because if he wanted to work he'd be displacing an able bodied person. If a disabled person wants to work despite being given benefits I think they should be allowed to. Perhaps the only reason he is having to accept a lower wage in the first place is because of his appearance. (People afraid of someone who doesn't look normal) which speaks nothing about his effectiveness or capability. You're preventing people from joining in society, because they are different. That's some prejudice and discrimination.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

Or what if kids were allowed to try out a few different areas of employment for extended periods. Where I work we have local high school students come in for 1 week of 'work experience', but for most of them it takes a good week of training to get them up to speed on how our processes work. If they could stay for longer it would make them more useful to us and they'd also learn a lot more and have more of any idea of what it's actually like to work 38hr weeks. Maybe they could even be paid. I believe school could do so much more.