Supporters, meanwhile, have cheered the legislation as a potential solution to workforce shortages and rising labor costs.
Yup, all that talk about "work ethic" is just bullshit. Plus their little hands make it easier to get the coal out.
There was a lot of discussion about getting SAHMs to re-enter, and how to get incentivize hiring disabled people, and stuff like that.
In the post-pandemic era our news cycle got captured by pandemic entitlement discussion, but ultimately this and measures like it was always going to be what Iowa's "return to normal" would end up looking like.
Notably off the table is how to get kids to go to school here and stay here. Currently they are going to school out of state and leaving the state. It seems like we will do anything except make the state more desirable to live in.
& quite frankly the politics here were only tolerable because the state used to be reliably purple, and we are swinging in a direction I do not really care for. My employer has offices in minnesota and I have been thinking of trying to transfer northwards for awhile now.
There are too many predators and not enough prey in the ecosystem. Either we need to accept that some of the businesses will starve or find a way to increase the labor force.
This is compounded over time because as the empowered business interest of the party break down the social programs which were the product of a historic culture of community and combination, voters endure real deprivation and feel the pressure and anxiety from that deprivation. But instead of turning against the party and the business interests, they again find their antagonist in the culture. That is, everything has become so expensive and hostile and competitive not because of the growth of financialization and creeping capital but because of a decline in character.
These people are so saturated with culture issues that they cannot see how the very thing they are in bond with, business, is destroying the things they claim to care most about: families, communities and generosity. I am not being condescending when I say that they find themselves able to blaim skyrocketing medical costs on the fact that you cannot pay a doctor in eggs and butter anymore. (Something almost none of them ever did btw. Even in Montana that was a thing of the past by their time. But I have literally heard this argument and many of a similar for. on trips to my home state.)
It's worth noting that's the whole point of these wars -- to keep people divided and riled up so they ignore other issues.
Ah, so the plan is to put the 16/17 year olds in the workplace because they're too young to live independently and leave the state.
As for letting children(teenagers in this case) work earlier(and longer) I feel conflicted. In some sense the mantra that has been pushed on the past 2-3 generations has been everyone has to get a college degree or you will be considered a failure to society. That statement has been categorically wrong and has lead to a glut of people with college degrees and mountains of student loan debt from an imbalance in the workforce of too many college educated workers. The reality is the economy needs blue collar jobs and some do pay very well. Also some people are not cut out for college and pushing them into a institution they do not want to attend is bad for both the college and the individual. I feel like Germany has this problem figured out well with solid paths to high paying blue collar professions via apprenticeships and such. I wish the US had something similar and Obama's push for community colleges was a step in the right direction. Getting teenagers into blue collar apprenticeships gives them a head start in their careers and they still need parental approval for starting these jobs.
That being said there is also a trap that having a 14-16 year make pretty good money in high school (via trades or apprenticeships) can dissuade them from ever getting into college, which they may excel at but never go that route due to financial loss of lost wages by attending college(and not working). Unsure what the solution is here but could see this change of law being abused by some and helpful for others(those who are headed for a blue collar profession).
Or have their parents dissuade them from ever getting into college. I think you could make a strong argument that the minimum full-time work age should be no lower than the age of being legally independent of the family.
The hybrid solution, which is very rarely seen, is a proper apprenticeship system where people are (a) doing real work and (b) continuing to learn during the process, but that is hard to organize.
I would also like to mention the UK briefly had the Education Mainenance Allowance, which was paid to kids 16-18 to give them an immediate economic incentive to stay in school.
> The measure — championed by conservative lobbying groups, the state restaurant association and the state industry group for home builders, among others
Teens don't really have smaller hands than adults. This bill is sane. Allowing kids to work for construction is going to improve lives more than blindly pushing everyone regardless of desire or aptitude in college and graduating them with a worthless degree and a half mil in debt. Let teens work in roofing and get some skills that the world actually needs.
Give me a rational argument please, not just an appeal to emotion.
Start them off doing jobs that have responsibility but less consequence. Then progressively ramp up the responsibility and accountability as they grasp it.
That's your rational argument.
The entire reason the concept of “minors” exists is a social judgement that this rule has only limited applicability to people below a certain age.
Having done cybersecurtity at a few F500s, I can tell you that risk is often just as "feelings" based as anything else.
In most cases risk is a WAG based on whatever model you feel like flogging this week.
Just thinking about the places I've worked where people died from dumb decisions, but that's probably overly emotional.
The bill itself touches lightly on the problem: parents. One massive example of a potential problem: does the bill protect education at all? The kids learning skills that can make them money is really a fringe benefit when you consider how much money their parents can make. Win, win, for all!
Of course it does. The vilification of the bill entirely based on the worse case assumptions is really unfortunate.
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No person under fourteen years of age shall be employed or permitted to work with or without compensation in any work activity.
No person under sixteen years of age shall be employed or permitted to work with or without compensation in any work activity during regular school hours, except the following work activities:
1. Those persons legally out of school, if such status is verified by the submission of written proof to the director.
2. Those persons working in a supervised school-work program.
3. Those persons between the ages of fourteen and sixteen enrolled in school on a part-time basis and who are required to work as a part of their school training.
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Knowing that there are educational protections, does that make you feel better about the bill?
Also there is a huge difference between a kid working with their family providing age-appropriate supervision (which can be done under the table regardless of this bill), and being left to the care of a stranger that's just following economic incentives. I could use most woodworking tools by age 12 under loose supervision, but that doesn't mean it would have been appropriate for me to work in a furniture shop.
And I don't know if you could have picked a worse example than roofing. There's just a basic level of competence one needs to maintain on heights and slopes. And it's basically a recipe for chest-thumping foremen rejecting fall protection and shaming the underlings into doing the same. At least silicosis doesn't show up for decades, unlike a fall from height.
> Allowing kids to work for construction is going to improve lives more than blindly pushing everyone regardless of desire or aptitude in college and graduating them with a worthless degree and a half mil in debt.
That's pretty vivid imagery for someone who doesn't want an appeal to emotion. It even has "won't someone think of the children" vibes.
The arguments against this are that we've litigated it in the 1920s and discovered that child labor = exploited labor. Children have less volition than adults and so we're putting them into a vulnerable position by including them in an adversarial relationship of negotiating for pay/work. I'm not saying kids have to go to college to make a living (at the moment that seems clearly unnecessary). But why shouldn't kids go to a trade school to learn in a safer environment, instead of being at risk in on-the-job learning in dangerous environments?
Also there are other pieces of school that are more fundamental to day-to-day life than college. I learned a significant portion of my communication skills in high school. Are you okay with kids missing out on high school in order to take a job? That feels like it is likely to severely limit their ability to get other work later in life if they should ever lose that one skill they learned. "Jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one." The whole point of school is to get a broad base of skills that you can apply to multiple situations. Any work kids would do in their formative years has the potential to undermine this by competing for their time.
Not all kids are challenged by high school. I was working full time my junior and senior years while taking physics 1 and 2 as well as pre calc and calculus. Really, it didn’t have much to offer me, I would have been really bored if not allowed to work. It’s weird because I had to cut back after 18, turns out college isn’t as easy as high school even though there is a lot less class time.
Anyways, seeing it from the perspective of being that teenager once, I can sympathize with these roll backs. And I don’t want to become a new Karen to today’s teenagers.