2022Q4 real compensation revised downward to -4.7% from +0.7%

Unless you can prove them wrong, the parent's is still right: these child labor laws have been revoked to benefit a minority's financial interests.

Of course it contributes to the conversation:

1- it calls a spade a spade: we already have theories of how Capitalism works, and none of the other replies named it. Giving a name to the problem is the first step in fighting it.

2- it explicitly calls out: "it makes them money", which is also factual and not explicitly mentioned by the other comments. They mention a "perceived labor shortage", but it doesn't clarify the fact that fighting that gets more money in the pocket of some people

Of course, the grandparent comment should've been a bit clearer in how this makes people money. I think the answer is twofold:

1- it increases the reserve army of labor

2- the minimum wage is often lower for younger people (the excuse is that this is training for them)

How would one contribute to the conversation better than stating what is plainly true: child labor laws are being repealed because Capital owners want them to be and pay politicians to make it so. Is it more useful to engage with whatever sophistry is used to justify their repeal as if it was legitimate or well-reasoned?

It's not quite snarky, it's more reductionist. He's making two assertions: (1) Capitalism tends to shift power to those with capital, and (2) those with capital tend to benefit from cheap child labor. Will you argue against his central points, or will you dismiss them based on how they were delivered?

I think it was a point well made. It’s not an outlandish or niche idea. It’s lacking neither in plenty of readily available academic source material nor major cultural works. The only thing which would make it a claim so extraordinary that it begs special citation is on the presumption that capital’s appetite for child labor decreases along with regulatory structures limiting it. But that’s self evidently untrue. The only thing limiting that appetite has been regulation, and the appetite has both informed deregulation advocacy and taken advantage when such advocacy succeeds.

But all of that should be taken as read, unless a reader is inclined to disregard a vast wealth of relatively uncontroversial documentation of labor history.

I'm discussing child labor, not child labor laws!

I've done all of that except the butchery part (because that wouldn't make sense). She is homeschooled, and working with me on software projects is part of her homeschooling. Sometimes if the project is fun it could take all evening (like when we make videos demoing stuff for documentation).

As a kid, I went into dirty crawlspaces, helped my dad weld, and went on roofs, which for a little boy was pretty much the coolest thing imaginable. Whenever we were with a client who had a pool, my dad would ask the client if I could jump in, and they always said yes. I learned so much about technology from working on air conditioners. The process of troubleshooting, how machines work, and tons about sales and how to work with customers. My dad was also aggressive about SEO once that became a thing, but even before then, he did all kinds of marketing stuff himself.

I'm a freelancer today and wouldn't be able to if I hadn't been "forced to skip school for long evenings in the butchery", to put it into a phraseology that more matches your own. I think people have an idea of kids working based on school textbooks, which is sometimes (but not usually) accurate. When school textbooks teach the history of laws, it's always in this naive, doe-eyed kind of way.

Right now I'm in Guatemala, and child labor is everywhere, and to be honest, none of it seems as dreary as school does. Imagine as a kid being forced to do an office job where you sit down and do nothing for 6 hours, surrounded by friends who you cannot speak to, skipping play hours so you can study textbooks that teach a completely made up version of your country's history.

“Within a percent” is doing some heavy lifting there. The slightest of changes is hundreds of thousands of people.

Do you have terms mixed?

Trickle-down was a Republican thing, but these stats are during a Democratic administration?

Milking sheep?

It's just tech debt