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Do your seriously believe childhood education would have been as pervasive without child labor laws? Only the richest could afford to send their child to school
by krschultz 18y ago
Do your seriously believe childhood education would have been as pervasive without child labor laws? Only the richest could afford to send their child to school if you have the opportunity cost of giving up their paychecks. After child labor laws, what else are you kids going to do before they become old enough to work?
- llimllib 18y agoYou've responded to a totally different proposition than the one he presented! He argued that the abolition of child labor laws wouldn't cause a return to ceaseless child labor, and you're arguing against the notion that child labor laws in the past were not beneficial. Please don't erect strawmen in your arguments.
- yummyfajitas 18y agoIn the era when paddy_m grew up (i.e., 1940-2000)? Almost certainly. Incidentally, if families truly needed their children's paychecks, wouldn't child labor laws merely consign them to starvation? In reality, child labor laws merely mitigate a small problem: depraved parents forcing their children to work for personal gain. (This is small in the sense that not too many such parents exist.) But unless paddy_m's parents fall into this category, child labor laws are irrelevant to him.
- paddy_m 18y agoI'm 26. I started shovelling snow when I was 10, in 1992. When I was 13 I started mowing lawns. My parents never told me to go out and mow lawns. I wanted to. It was the best thing I did for myself in my junior high and highschool years.