Let Teenagers Work | Hacker News Reader

Let Teenagers Work

hoover.org

21 pointsjseliger46 comments

"teenagers"

iowa now lets 14 y/o's pull night shifts. https://gizmodo.com/iowa-senate-approves-bill-legalize-facto...

It's worth pointing out 2 things here:

first this is not about letting johnny-middle-class have an after school job that might go a bit late, it's about migrant labor, agriculture has long had exceptions to labor laws to let children work in the fields and this is about letting other industries in on that.

second this is prelude to cutting any sort of welfare /medicaid* /child-credits because the children can now be "expected" to work (and drop out of school helping perpetuate the underclass in the process).

*they're already talking about medicaid work requirements https://thehill.com/newsletters/health-care/3959774-gop-push...

The minimum wage for a minor in Arkansas is 85% of the normal minimum wage. It is $4.25 for the first 90 days (read summertime job).

If employers were forced to pay minors at the actual minimum wage this advocacy would evaporate.

This is the Hoover Institute, they don't like any kind of minimum wage.

Where I am nobody, even a teenager, is going to work for $4.25/hr. Fast food jobs are going begging at $15/hr. The law may allow it, but in practice I doubt it's happening.

Have you seen that slaughterhouse in Alabama that was raided by la migra because someone didn't get paid off? There was that other case in Arkansas where someone complained to the authorities about child labour and then the sheriff came to arrest the minor working there because here the owner clearly bribed the right people? Again, that was an illegal immigrant family. Got to keep the price of meat low, food riots bring down governments.

Where you are probably isn’t Arkansas, or at least non-north west Arkansas.

I am in Arkansas - and not NWA or a metro area. A small town of <15k people.

The typical starting pay here for entry-level service jobs (fast food, retail, etc.) is around $12. More demanding entry-level jobs (manufacturing, trades, etc.) is around $15.

This matches what I’d expected, but I spent a few minutes searching local Facebook groups and reviewing recent posts to get current information. One post in a private group from last asked if anywhere in town was hiring at >$15/hr. Sixteen separate places were listed in the comments.

That sounds good then, better than I expected when I think about places like Little Rock or west Memphis.

>And even if he says he doesn’t want to work, does that mean he is forced to? His parents might have told him that he has to work so he won’t play video games all day. Is that kind of parental discipline one that we should use the legal system to discourage? It’s a tough problem.

In that case, yes, he is still being forced to work. Saying it's parental discipline does not make it not force. Abuse is also "parental discipline".

In theory I think it being easy for teenagers to work could be a good thing. In theory it only increases options for a teenager and doesn't force them to do anything. In reality, I think if it were significantly easier, then a lot of parents would force their teens to work, which would be a bad thing.

Also, the "training wages" thing where minors can be paid less for a significant length of time should probably just not exist, or at least be shortened to 1 month, or something.

Child labor suffers from the same cognitive illusion that child beatings do - namely that the child mind has incredible capacity to normalize practically any treatment. This is part and parcel of the reality-building that occurs at this age. What should happen is that the author matures beyond this mindset and looks back with a healthy dose of adult critique. Sadly, they seem to be maturity plateau.

I don’t think anybody meaningfully objects to teenagers working, provided that we’re talking about fairly paying them for their labor. This is the case in most states, although not all (where minors can be paid less than minimum wage).

This doesn’t appear to be what the Hoover Institute is advocating, however.

anybody meaningfully objects to teenagers working

Beer money for the summer is one thing, having to meaningfully contribute to the household budget because the money that the parents bring in isn't sufficient is another. I do object, children should be in school (and college students should devote themselves to study instead of having to juggle school and a low-wage job).

Teenagers haven’t been allowed to buy beer in the US for a few decades!

(And I agree completely: it should be an obligation of social welfare, not child labor, to compensate for the family’s ability to put food on the table. This is one of the reasons that most states limit teenagers to half-time or similar roles, which most non-Hoover-affiliated people again don’t object to.)

You're naive if you think that actually stopped people. The rich kids got their parents to stock them with liquor and everyone else had friend-of-a-friend's older brother.

I'm not claiming that teenagers don't drink; I drank (a lot) as a teenager. Read the comment again.

I’m all in favor of giving teenagers more independence. And thus some opportunity to have a job _if they want one_ to pay for their own things. For me personally teenage years were tough in my family, a job was a life changer in getting away and establishing my own identity.

But it’s annoying how many laws treat teens as second class citizens. Including BOTH limiting how much they can earn AND how much they are allowed to work.

Let kids be kids. And don’t abuse child labor to “marginally bring down prices”.

A 15/16 year old is not really a kid. He or she is a young man or woman. They still have growing and learning and maturing to do but they can start taking on some adult responsibilities such as earning their own spending money, learning to be punctual and follow directions, etc.

Yes and that's called a summer job. If high school was structured more like college where it's part-timeish it would be less of an issue but as it stands it's more than a full-time job and stacking on another job is silly.

College is a full time thing if you are taking a full load. You just spend less time in class and more time in the library studying. It was much easier for me to work 40 hours a week in high school than in college because high school was just show up to class and college required a lot more time to study.

High school has lots of in class time but homework is pretty easy to get done in class and it isn’t such a drain. I still like the idea of making high school more like college, but it would still be a full time thing.

Seriously, what high school did you go to? I took over a full-load every semester and it was infinitely easier than high school even with a 29hr/wk part time job (at 30 they had to give you healthcare). The classes were easier, there was less homework, I could get wasted every weekend. We still joke about how all our teachers would tell us "college is gonna be a lot harder than this."

I used to involuntarily fall asleep in the shower because I was so tired in high school.

Bothell high school in the Seattle area. It was considered a good high school, I got two years of calculus and physics out of it. I went to the university of Washington after (also considered a good university, a bit hard to get into), and it was shockingly hard compared to my high school experience. I could easily do 40 hours a week during high school (although the last two months before I turned 18, Washington state instituted a new law that stopped me from working so much), while I discovered the need to cut back a lot in university.

People are supposed to spend their younger years preparing for life in adulthood, and we do that by isolating them entirely from it and telling them theyre a loser if they don't know what they want to be for the rest of their lives by their 18th birthday.

I personally thing school goes on too long and teenagers should be out in the world finding their place. Maybe, if they weren't herded like prisoners while they're discovering their sexuality and going through the angst of becoming an adult they'd have a better idea about what they want to do, what works and what doesn't. It's not like you can't learn literacy, civics, algebra, some history and read a couple dozen books before the age of 12 or so, after that it's largely just babysitting because our society doesn't know what else to do with them.

A bill to bring back full-on child labor is about to pass in my state and I feel so bad because the legislature just wants to drive down the cost of unskilled labor and pay for it out of high school education and extracurriculars. Teenagers can already work when school's out, weekends, and afternoons on school nights. There's no sane argument for having a teenager close on a school night. I don't even think there's a sane argument for working during the school year at all. High school isn't like college where it's 16-20 fairly flexible hours of class a week, waking up at 6 (5 if you have morning conditioning) and going to school until 3, plus homework, plus after school stuff, is already a god damn 60 hour week.

Having rules that teens can't work during the school year is how we say that the system is supposed to be set up so they don't have to.

I looked forward to turning 17 so that I could get an after-school job and get money. Not everyone gets an allowance -- I didn't. Doing things costs money. I sold custom PCs and mowed lawns and did other computer work and that was great, but it wasn't steady. As soon as I was able to legally I started applying for jobs and the meager hours I could put in after school and on holidays and weekends paid me enough to be able to go to concerts and buy food and music and other things that teenagers like.

I definitely don't think that we should encourage kids to work to push down wages for everyone and let companies exploit people, but I don't see anything wrong with hiring teens to do non-dangerous service (not labor or factory) jobs as long as it doesn't interfere with their schooling and pays the same wage as adults doing the same job.

I worked a part time job after school along with many of my class mates (albeit not in the U.S.). Some did it to support their parents, some for a bit of pocket money. Seemed like an overall worthwhile experience for us.

It can certainly be abused, but perhaps the best remedy for that is not a blanket ban.

Why is this flagged? It's a good article.

I started working at 14 at my father's doctor's office filing and logging paper medical charts before electronic medical records were a thing. Lunch was free thanks to drug reps.

To get a youth working permit, I had to go to the school district office and fill out a form. If I recall correctly it limited my hours to 25 a week which was more than sufficient for a non driving teen. By 16 the permit was no longer needed.

I highly recommend all teenagers get a part-time job. Entirely to show what type of jobs you don't want to work.

I guess all the flags come from people opposed to sick capitalist dystopian agenda.

You realize this was what the law was until Sanders changed it right?

What she removed was the requirement to go and fill out a form at your school or church to verify that you were older than 13.

> What Are the Downsides?

While your kid is working that retail or food service job, someone else's kid is grinding college application checklist items.

Not every kid is from a middle or upper class family that provides everything they need and gives them an allowance of spending money. Some kids need to earn money because they don’t get those things from their parents. If those kids can’t work legally for a legitimate business, they may work under the table with no protections or do work for shady businesses (e.g., criminal enterprises).

What this law does is remove the table.

Kids 14+ were already allowed to work legally in Arkansas. This bill did not change that in any way.

What the law does is remove the requirement that a kid go to their school or church and obtain a certificate (or provide a birth certificate) to prove to their employer they are older than 13.

Apparently requiring an employer to determine that a kid was older than 13 and then be responsible for potentially illegally employing them was too big a burden. To relieve employers of that responsibility, they created a bill and framed it as "let the kids work".

Thanks for the explanation. Removing barriers to employment will help more employers be open to hiring teenagers. I’m all for protecting children, but expanding job opportunities is also a good thing.

There are good arguments to be made against the (hoover institute's) position but I don't see them here.

I see a lot of conflation between legalizing an activity and promoting an activity - the same sloppy argument made to prosecute the failed war on drugs.

This entire article is pure unsubstantiated biased opinion based on the author's personal anecdotes with a misleading headline. The author disingenuously attempts to spin the requirement that teenagers have parental consent to obtain a work permit as somehow not allowing kids to work. This is just an obvious appeal to emotion to justify the further erosion of parents and workers rights to protect the waning corporate profit margins of failing, mismanaged companies who can no longer compete in a free market. We're sacrificing our society to subsidize capitalism.

No, keep them in school because we need to fill their brains with elite centric propaganda heh heh heh... Our values must become their values

Sickening.

Let Teenagers Be Young And Study.

Child labor is back in the menu? Fuck this article.

Wholeheartedly fuck this article.

Talking about the benefits to businesses and customers? Who cares. Let kids be kids. Let kids focus on exploring and figuring out what challenges they would like to tackle instead of serving French fries to ungrateful jerks for 85% of minimum wage.

I dunno. I started working at 14, cleaning up a beach adjacent to a resort. It was cool and allowed me to earn money for the first time in my life. (Which was promptly spent on 3dfx cards and other bits of computer hardware.) From 15-18, I worked in a book warehouse after school, which was also fun, if much more physically demanding.

Frankly, I've always preferred employment to school. School always felt highly arbitrary and pointless, not to mention extremely boring. Work made more sense -- you're always doing something, not just spinning your wheels -- and the rewards were practically immediate. After a day of school, I felt listless; after a shift at the warehouse, I felt accomplished.

Also, I think that the experience of physical labor should be a component of any boy's education.

I also started working at 14, though in nothing very regular or physically demanding until I was 16. Over-all I'd say those experiences were positive and have helped me. I always felt the same way about work being more relevant and serious than school, even when it wasn't the most interesting job.

You realize that minor employment in Arkansas (14+) was already legal prior to the bill Hoover is advocating for right? What Hoover and Governor Huckabee Sanders want is to remove the requirement that employers verify that a job seeker is older than 13.

Unbelievable... What an incredible backslide. This ideology is trash

There's nothing in that opinion piece about forcing teenagers to work. Just removing the barriers that restrict them from working if they want to.

The only real restriction which was removed was having to prove that they were 14.

In other words, it's now easier for businesses to hire people who are under the age of 14 and claim ignorance if they're found out. It also removes a boundary for abusing the children of migrant workers (needing a birth certificate, etc).

Let teenagers get enough sleep and learn useful skills that are not actively being worked on being roboticized by the companies currently advocating for this change.

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