7 ms·

Both sides journalism prevents the headline from being “Republicans seek to weaken laws against child labor”

by webwielder2 3y ago

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
I'd accept "Republicans continue crusade against childhood innocence"
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  While I'll agree that a lot of their aims are definitely nefarious, I think the childhood innocence thing is a modern invention. Good intentions, but maybe misguided. Kids need chores, responsibilities, struggles etc. Coddling kids until they are 18 and then throwing them into the world with 0 life experience is just setting them up for failure. I had a paper route for a couple years when I was 12 and got a job at McDonalds when I was 14. A lot of this can be learned in extracurricular sports as well, but that's obviously not for everyone. Two a day football practices in summer were harder than any job I've ever had but no one says sports are bad for kids. I don't really see the difference, plus, you don't get paid for sports. Of course I'm not suggesting kids should be working in the coal mines, but I don't see anything wrong with summer or weekend jobs, working on the family farm, etc. It's good for them and a part of learning how to be an independent adult. Kids shouldn't be infantalized and sheltered through college.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
    Agreed to an extent, it's ok for high school students to go get some work experience, I did when I was that age. Giving humans a window in their lives where they can focus purely on capturing a portion of ever expanding human knowledge, and, to be honest, hang out a bit, is a good thing in my opinion though. That said, lets not lose sight of what's going on here, the DoL has been trying to crack down on 13yo kids in meat packing plants. If this is the line that we're trying to push the overton window past, I want no part of it.
    - benTherenBack 3y ago
      [dead]
    - leereeves 3y ago
      Those are mostly unaccompanied minors who have no other options. If you want to allow them to live here (as many leftists do), how should they survive? > Dreier estimates that some 250,000 children have crossed into the U.S. without their parents in the last two years, and that the majority of them wind up working full-time jobs. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-la...
      - kthejoker2 3y ago
        The people who own those plants employing them are not "leftists", quit projecting biases.
        leereeves 3y ago
        Hah, bias. Did you somehow miss the comments above? > Republicans seek to weaken laws against child labor > Republicans continue crusade against childhood innocence There's a lot of bias there. And if those claims were true (spoiler: they aren't, for counterexample, according to the article, Republican legislatures in Texas and Montana have strengthened laws, the Democrat legislature in New Jersey weakened them, and the Virginia state legislature unanimously approved increasing penalties), they'd imply Democrats don't want these unaccompanied minors to work. Even though this is not, in fact, a partisan issue, one thing is clear. There are many leftists in this discussion who don't want these unaccompanied minors to work. So how do you all expect them to survive?
  - triceratops 3y ago
    > I had a paper route for a couple years when I was 12 and got a job at McDonalds when I was 14. Flipping burgers has always been legal, and remains legal. > Of course I'm not suggesting kids should be working in the coal mines From the article, Iowa now allows minors to work in "industrial laundries, light manufacturing, demolition, and roofing". Roofing consistently ranks among the top 10 most dangerous professions in the US, according to the BLS. Industrial laundries deal with heavy machinery and nasty chemicals.
  - StewardMcOy 3y ago
    I dunno about blanket statements like that. It's situational, and sometimes up to nature rather than nurture. To outside observers, I was a fairly spoiled kid. I didn't have any jobs in high school, and I had a light load of chores. It's not that my parents were particularly wealthy, but I pushed back hard and was generally difficult with them, for the sake of preserving my study time, my free time, and getting a good night's sleep. But it paid off. I got a scholarship, and went to a state university. Classes started a few days after I turned eighteen. I went out and got a part-time job immediately to pay for living expenses. I worked hard and did my job well, graduated, and landed a job that paid better than my parents. From the get-go, I was a serious worker who put everything I had into the job while I was on the clock. I'm still that way today, and I find that people are either like that or they aren't. I find there's no correlation between the people who had jobs as teens and how serious, responsible, and industrious they are.
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      And I hate to make blanket statements about generational stuff, but the incoming teenage generation grew up with social media and covid. These kids are extremely sheltered from my experience. I've got two neighbor kids that I talk to once in a while who are 10 and 12. They're squishy fat babies with 0 social skills and throw tantrums when they don't have their iPads. I invite them and their mom over when I have fires. They play games on their phones and can't make eye contact with me or have a conversation. I've lived across the street from a park for two years now and haven't seen any kids there ever. Not once. This is all very hand wavey but I'm worried about this new digital generation. I'm now the person I never thought I'd be saying this, but these kids are soft.
      - ttfkam 3y ago
        Grew up with social media and Covid. So… they grew up seeing their friends turned inside out from social pressures we never had to deal with and in the meantime they watched their grandparents and other members of older generations die of a disease prematurely while being physically isolated for an extended period of their formative years. In the meantime when back in class, they get periodic drills simulating someone trying to kill them, their friends, and their teachers en masse. "Soft" is not how I'd describe that experience.
- refurb 3y ago
  Allowing a 17 year old to work the night shift is a "crusade against childhood innocence"?
hollywood_court 3y ago
[flagged]
- dinkumthinkum 3y ago
  This is a pretty uncharitable and patently ridiculous view of conservatives in the American south. Where is the evidence that these GOP people need all the youth to be uneducated and pregnant? A lot if these people probably understand the real world a lot better than. This is the typical leftist elitist condescension that is unhelpful and belies the reality of what happens when the left actually gets the policies they vote for.
  - hollywood_court 3y ago
    Surely there must be some other reason why red states have the highest rates of teen pregnancies. It can't possibly be the conservative policies.
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      Perhaps that's true (I don't know if it is or not). But even if their policies are bad, it does not necessarily mean they're part of a conspiracy to intentionally harm people, as opposed to stemming from genuine (but misguided) convictions.
    - torstenvl 3y ago
      Leftist states like California, Illinois, and Washington have a teen birth rate approximately double that of notoriously libertarian New Hampshire. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbirths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbi... West Virginia, the most reliably conservative state in the nation, has a lower teen birth rate than Kentucky, which is distinctly more purple and has a center-left Democrat as the governor. DC is not a state, but is the polar opposite of WV politically, yet one source claims DC has the 13th highest teen birth rate in the nation. https://www.prb.org/resources/dcs-teenage-moms-need-their-own-moms/ https://www.prb.org/resources/dcs-teenage-moms-need-their-ow... I think the situation is much more complicated than you suggest.
refurb 3y ago
You act like that's a bad thing? Journalists are supposed to report the news not their opinions or what they think is the good side and the bad side. If you want that, just watch Tik Tok or read the opinion columns. But I actually applaud Washington Post for attempting to be somewhat neutral on this issue. If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws. So the logic would be - if a state follows federal labor laws, are they "exploiting child labor"? Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble. I mean, if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws. Is that wrong?
- triceratops 3y ago
  > If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws. > Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble I did read the article. Iowa now allows minors to work in roofing and industrial laundries. If it's true they're aligning with federal laws (doubtful) I'm going to go ahead and say that federal laws about children working in roofing are not currently reasonable, and that Iowa should not have done this if they gave two shits about children. > if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws Is that what happened though? Be honest. What does the article say?
  - refurb 3y ago
    Ok, but are you arguing that the media shouldn't report the news objectively, rather they should decide the "good side" and "bad side" and then report their opinion? I don't want that. I'm an adult. I don't want to know another adult's opinions, I'd like an objective report on the facts. I can make my own decision as to whether it's a problem and if it's is, who I believe is on the "good side" and who is on the "bad side". But regardless, let's look at one of the issues you raise - Iowa allowing minors to work in roofing and industrial laundry. Annoying, the article doesn't link to the actual law, it rather links to another news article. Yuck. So let's see what the actual law looks like[1] that the Governor signed: - 92.8 Under eighteen — prohibited occupations: - No person under eighteen years of age shall be employed or permitted to work with or without compensation at any of the following work activities or business establishments: - 14. Roofing operations - 92.5 Fourteen permitted work activities: - 12. Laundering. - 92.6 Fourteen and fifteen — occupations work activities not permitted [big list of prohibited activities involving hazards like machines or chemicals] Now I'm super confused. The law (as I read it), seems to explicitly ban roofing by minors. For laundry services, it adds laundry services, which I imagine would involved loading and unloading washers and dryers, which doesn't seems like an overly hazardous activity to me, especially with the section outlawing hazardous activities. Note the law says "no one under 16 may perform work during school hours". So a fourteen year could be employed in laundry services after school or weekends, so to me that seems like a reasonably limitation. It also prohibits work before 7am and after 9pm and limits it to 28 hours per week for 14 year old (so 8 hours in addition to working Saturday and Sunday). None of this seems outrageous. Delivering newspapers was a common job for minors. That involved riding or walking a bike early in the morning, which seems more hazardous to me than doing laundry. [1]https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF542 https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF5...

Both sides journalism prevents the headline from being “Republicans seek to weaken laws against child labor”

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago

I'd accept "Republicans continue crusade against childhood innocence"

bongodongobob 3y ago
While I'll agree that a lot of their aims are definitely nefarious, I think the childhood innocence thing is a modern invention. Good intentions, but maybe misguided. Kids need chores, responsibilities, struggles etc. Coddling kids until they are 18 and then throwing them into the world with 0 life experience is just setting them up for failure. I had a paper route for a couple years when I was 12 and got a job at McDonalds when I was 14. A lot of this can be learned in extracurricular sports as well, but that's obviously not for everyone. Two a day football practices in summer were harder than any job I've ever had but no one says sports are bad for kids. I don't really see the difference, plus, you don't get paid for sports. Of course I'm not suggesting kids should be working in the coal mines, but I don't see anything wrong with summer or weekend jobs, working on the family farm, etc. It's good for them and a part of learning how to be an independent adult. Kids shouldn't be infantalized and sheltered through college.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Agreed to an extent, it's ok for high school students to go get some work experience, I did when I was that age. Giving humans a window in their lives where they can focus purely on capturing a portion of ever expanding human knowledge, and, to be honest, hang out a bit, is a good thing in my opinion though. That said, lets not lose sight of what's going on here, the DoL has been trying to crack down on 13yo kids in meat packing plants. If this is the line that we're trying to push the overton window past, I want no part of it.
  - benTherenBack 3y ago
    [dead]
  - leereeves 3y ago
    Those are mostly unaccompanied minors who have no other options. If you want to allow them to live here (as many leftists do), how should they survive? > Dreier estimates that some 250,000 children have crossed into the U.S. without their parents in the last two years, and that the majority of them wind up working full-time jobs. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-la...
    - kthejoker2 3y ago
      The people who own those plants employing them are not "leftists", quit projecting biases.
      - leereeves 3y ago
        Hah, bias. Did you somehow miss the comments above? > Republicans seek to weaken laws against child labor > Republicans continue crusade against childhood innocence There's a lot of bias there. And if those claims were true (spoiler: they aren't, for counterexample, according to the article, Republican legislatures in Texas and Montana have strengthened laws, the Democrat legislature in New Jersey weakened them, and the Virginia state legislature unanimously approved increasing penalties), they'd imply Democrats don't want these unaccompanied minors to work. Even though this is not, in fact, a partisan issue, one thing is clear. There are many leftists in this discussion who don't want these unaccompanied minors to work. So how do you all expect them to survive?
- triceratops 3y ago
  > I had a paper route for a couple years when I was 12 and got a job at McDonalds when I was 14. Flipping burgers has always been legal, and remains legal. > Of course I'm not suggesting kids should be working in the coal mines From the article, Iowa now allows minors to work in "industrial laundries, light manufacturing, demolition, and roofing". Roofing consistently ranks among the top 10 most dangerous professions in the US, according to the BLS. Industrial laundries deal with heavy machinery and nasty chemicals.
- StewardMcOy 3y ago
  I dunno about blanket statements like that. It's situational, and sometimes up to nature rather than nurture. To outside observers, I was a fairly spoiled kid. I didn't have any jobs in high school, and I had a light load of chores. It's not that my parents were particularly wealthy, but I pushed back hard and was generally difficult with them, for the sake of preserving my study time, my free time, and getting a good night's sleep. But it paid off. I got a scholarship, and went to a state university. Classes started a few days after I turned eighteen. I went out and got a part-time job immediately to pay for living expenses. I worked hard and did my job well, graduated, and landed a job that paid better than my parents. From the get-go, I was a serious worker who put everything I had into the job while I was on the clock. I'm still that way today, and I find that people are either like that or they aren't. I find there's no correlation between the people who had jobs as teens and how serious, responsible, and industrious they are.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    And I hate to make blanket statements about generational stuff, but the incoming teenage generation grew up with social media and covid. These kids are extremely sheltered from my experience. I've got two neighbor kids that I talk to once in a while who are 10 and 12. They're squishy fat babies with 0 social skills and throw tantrums when they don't have their iPads. I invite them and their mom over when I have fires. They play games on their phones and can't make eye contact with me or have a conversation. I've lived across the street from a park for two years now and haven't seen any kids there ever. Not once. This is all very hand wavey but I'm worried about this new digital generation. I'm now the person I never thought I'd be saying this, but these kids are soft.
    - ttfkam 3y ago
      Grew up with social media and Covid. So… they grew up seeing their friends turned inside out from social pressures we never had to deal with and in the meantime they watched their grandparents and other members of older generations die of a disease prematurely while being physically isolated for an extended period of their formative years. In the meantime when back in class, they get periodic drills simulating someone trying to kill them, their friends, and their teachers en masse. "Soft" is not how I'd describe that experience.
refurb 3y ago
Allowing a 17 year old to work the night shift is a "crusade against childhood innocence"?

hollywood_court 3y ago

[flagged]

dinkumthinkum 3y ago
This is a pretty uncharitable and patently ridiculous view of conservatives in the American south. Where is the evidence that these GOP people need all the youth to be uneducated and pregnant? A lot if these people probably understand the real world a lot better than. This is the typical leftist elitist condescension that is unhelpful and belies the reality of what happens when the left actually gets the policies they vote for.
- hollywood_court 3y ago
  Surely there must be some other reason why red states have the highest rates of teen pregnancies. It can't possibly be the conservative policies.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    Perhaps that's true (I don't know if it is or not). But even if their policies are bad, it does not necessarily mean they're part of a conspiracy to intentionally harm people, as opposed to stemming from genuine (but misguided) convictions.
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    Leftist states like California, Illinois, and Washington have a teen birth rate approximately double that of notoriously libertarian New Hampshire. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbirths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbi... West Virginia, the most reliably conservative state in the nation, has a lower teen birth rate than Kentucky, which is distinctly more purple and has a center-left Democrat as the governor. DC is not a state, but is the polar opposite of WV politically, yet one source claims DC has the 13th highest teen birth rate in the nation. https://www.prb.org/resources/dcs-teenage-moms-need-their-own-moms/ https://www.prb.org/resources/dcs-teenage-moms-need-their-ow... I think the situation is much more complicated than you suggest.

refurb 3y ago

You act like that's a bad thing? Journalists are supposed to report the news not their opinions or what they think is the good side and the bad side. If you want that, just watch Tik Tok or read the opinion columns. But I actually applaud Washington Post for attempting to be somewhat neutral on this issue. If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws. So the logic would be - if a state follows federal labor laws, are they "exploiting child labor"? Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble. I mean, if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws. Is that wrong?

triceratops 3y ago
> If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws. > Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble I did read the article. Iowa now allows minors to work in roofing and industrial laundries. If it's true they're aligning with federal laws (doubtful) I'm going to go ahead and say that federal laws about children working in roofing are not currently reasonable, and that Iowa should not have done this if they gave two shits about children. > if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws Is that what happened though? Be honest. What does the article say?
- refurb 3y ago
  Ok, but are you arguing that the media shouldn't report the news objectively, rather they should decide the "good side" and "bad side" and then report their opinion? I don't want that. I'm an adult. I don't want to know another adult's opinions, I'd like an objective report on the facts. I can make my own decision as to whether it's a problem and if it's is, who I believe is on the "good side" and who is on the "bad side". But regardless, let's look at one of the issues you raise - Iowa allowing minors to work in roofing and industrial laundry. Annoying, the article doesn't link to the actual law, it rather links to another news article. Yuck. So let's see what the actual law looks like[1] that the Governor signed: - 92.8 Under eighteen — prohibited occupations: - No person under eighteen years of age shall be employed or permitted to work with or without compensation at any of the following work activities or business establishments: - 14. Roofing operations - 92.5 Fourteen permitted work activities: - 12. Laundering. - 92.6 Fourteen and fifteen — occupations work activities not permitted [big list of prohibited activities involving hazards like machines or chemicals] Now I'm super confused. The law (as I read it), seems to explicitly ban roofing by minors. For laundry services, it adds laundry services, which I imagine would involved loading and unloading washers and dryers, which doesn't seems like an overly hazardous activity to me, especially with the section outlawing hazardous activities. Note the law says "no one under 16 may perform work during school hours". So a fourteen year could be employed in laundry services after school or weekends, so to me that seems like a reasonably limitation. It also prohibits work before 7am and after 9pm and limits it to 28 hours per week for 14 year old (so 8 hours in addition to working Saturday and Sunday). None of this seems outrageous. Delivering newspapers was a common job for minors. That involved riding or walking a bike early in the morning, which seems more hazardous to me than doing laundry. [1]https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF542 https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF5...