And in poor American ghettos. Has nothing to do with the income of the American consumer.

I apologize if you were speaking of child labor in the 2.5-3rd world.

Newt made a thinking outloud comment about letting students handle some of the janitorial work at their schools, and the haters were all up in arms about child labor laws.

That's just because Newt's not far enough to the right to please this forum.

How do you think it starts with repealing child labor laws? Coal mines or something innocuous?

Newt is just trying to create a distraction from his Freddie Mac and other lobbying conservatives for liberal causes.

Relax. Gotta restore the age old right to work for children. Its the right thing to do. Liberty.

I do like that song.

Ron Paul owning that debate. Jon Huntsman also doing well. Of course I doubt real republicans see it that way.

India is a much poorer nation than the USA. The reason why people in the third world choose to work in really poor conditions for not much money is because thats the only opportunity they have. I think it's terrible, and we should change it by promoting laissez-faire capitalism here and abroad, but it's very short sighted to judge the people who are giving them that tiny opportunity. Have you ever started up a factory in the third world? Or do you just bitch about what other people are doing to help out others and do nothing yourself? Personally I have nothing but respect for those who set up factories in third world countries. There is even less respect for property rights over there then there is over here, so you are taking a huge risk with a lot of capital. Not something I would be willing to do.

Do you think if there weren't child labour laws today you would have children working 12 hours a day in coal mines? Children stopped working because parents starting making enough so that they could easily support their kids. It was the development of capital; rising productivity that ended child labour. And I contend that if we had more children working and spending less time in school or smoking pot / drinking / partying our society would be much better off. My generation tends to view labour as beneath their dignity; they look upon work with contempt. I think that's sad.

What a sick world we live in that child labor laws can be thought to be A Bad Idea.

I really don't see why if a 14 year old kid wants a job, and some store owner wants to hire him, we must forbid this. What great evil is being done?

I like this Simon guy

You realise children can already get jobs, right? The store owner that wants to hire the child can hire the child, they just have certain restrictions with things like hours ldo.

So there are no child labour laws?

So you cant read?

can't wait for the children's financial freedom act

I once involuntarily spent an hour cleaning up rubbish at my high school once (with no pay), along with the rest of my class. Was this child slavery? Surely not. Doing it a couple of hours a week wouldn't be either, and surely making it voluntary and adding pay can only make it better. I mean, if they were going to get kids to work 40 hour weeks then I'd oppose that, but I don't get that impression in the slightest.

Half of this forum would argue that it was child slavery. (I have no idea how you don't know that, by the way.)

The other half of this forum would ask that you review the existing laws on child labor rather than proceed by inventing what you think those laws are, and then arguing against the deficiencies in the mythical regulations that you just conjured.

Reality it out there, folks. You do yourselves a disservice by ignoring it.

You're kind of missing the point of why child labor is considered bad. Why do you think that a factory in a poor country would hire children? Surely there are plenty of adults without jobs. And adults are stronger, smarter, more dextrous and have more stamina. So why kids?
The answer is simple: kids are easier to exploit. They are easier to physically intimidate and abuse. They are easier to emotionally manipulate. It is easier to stiff them on wages. This exploitation isn't just a theory. It happened in the US and it continues to happen in the third world.
Now, I don't really have a problem with Newt's proposal wrt child labor laws, especially because you would probably have parental permission and decent oversight. I don't think working as a janitor in a school where your peers will make fun of you for cleaning toilets is very conducive to making work seem like it pays off, nor do I think kids would be particularly good at being janitors. It just seems like a mess waiting to happen.

Sure, but I'm arguing against the anti-child labour crowd here, which tends not to overlap with that group.

US Department of Labor:

Doing work for the school isn't part of it. Even if you claim that's covered by the "outside of school hours" clause, there's plenty of work done for schools by students outside of school hours.

Of course, it's not actually "working" for the school, it's "contributing" or "volunteering" or "detention". If you start paying the students money, there's when exploitation begins.

Why does McDonalds hire high school dropouts when there are plenty of unemployed college graduates? The answer is simple: high school dropouts are easier to exploit. Thus, we should prohibit high school dropout labour.

So how does mcdonalds exploit employees exactly?

Mkay

And the reason why child labor laws are dumb is that they go far beyond this.

Hey apparently if any kid put away their toys after recess or helped pick up the kickball bases they are qualified to be a janitor. Those Mr. yuck tags on all the cleaning agents telling parents to keep them away from children.....just more of the bad govt interfering.

If the fact that factories hire children when they could have hired adults implies that they're exploiting children, then McDonalds hiring high school dropouts when they could have hired college graduates would seem to imply that they're exploiting high school dropouts.

Many months ago, I predicted Newt would have an impact on this race and go fairly deep into the primaries, though I did not think he actually could win.

I am beginning to think that a victory is conceivable for him.

Although Newt has a ton of baggage in a general election, his record remains more acceptable to conservatives than Romney's record. And unlike the other anti-Romney candidates who have risen and had their bubbles burst quickly, Newt is a known commodity and a good debater. There is no reason to think that he will Perry-like-incompetency blunder or commit a Cain-like gaffe.

In other words, Newt is not going to self-destruct. The only thing that might cause his numbers to tumble is if the other candidates start to sound more appealing and peel off his support. More specifically, I think that Newt will stay in the top or near top of the national polls unless Perry surges, which is still quite possible.

In fact, I think that Romney camp is, or should be, hoping for Perry to improve. So long as the anti-Romney camp is divided, he can coast the rest of the way. But if Perry does not reverse his slide and Gingrich appears to be the only alternative, Newt will have a genuine shot.