Forum:Child Labor

Spotted it in the archive of suggested pages and thought it might be a nice little project for my first article. I'd like to encompass use of children in the workforce in developing countries as well as their use as soldiers (which might constitute a page of its own?). I'm having trouble relating it to RW's mission statement, if there are relations to be made. What do you guys think? Could this be a good article if the right connections are made? Crispy (talk) 16:11, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Once upon a time, conservatives said that outlawing child labor would destroy the economy. As you can see, they're absolutely correct. Missional. oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 16:18, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Conservative positions of today are the revolutionary positions of yesterday.--Arisboch (talk) 18:03, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll do more research. Any other input? Crispy (talk) 17:01, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I would probably add something about US and other countries development of child labor laws, the exceptions that applied (school attendance during planting and harvest weeks) and the general links to education and family survival. i.e schooling may not be available to very poor people and if the child does not raise some money (or food) they family does not meet their living costs. I suppose thats general economics. Hamster (talk) 17:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * you could touch on jobs now in small demand that kids were good for. How do you clean a chimney if you cant have a kid climb through it with a dust rag ? or a/c ducts, sewer lines or mining. Hamster (talk) 17:44, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * All of that was on the list of things I wanted to touch on. You can see progress at my sandbox if you like, but I'm not working on it at this moment.Crispy (talk) 17:48, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It depends on the present value of a human life doing X or Y. As humans live longer, any 'investment' via education is going to be worth more.  But in the olden days when people would be lucky to make it to adulthood, education usually wasn't worth the cost, so you got more bang for the buck putting the kids to work immediately.  You also have to check your "developed country privilege".  The past is a foreign country, one without adequate birth control or even the most rudimentary of public health initiatives.  People were literally retarded there, due to things like hookworm and iodine defficiency and measles.  The masses simply couldn't do the work we do today.  The reason the third world is full of sweatshops and not air-conditioned union-run auto plants is because the average third worlder isn't capable of doing the complex labor required in a modern factory.  If you were to have vaccination programs and fortify the food, yeah they probably could, but not before then.  And in order to do that, the countries need some form of industrial base to work with, and some form of control so that corruption doesn't undermine the initiatives.  Same with the past.  And that's not getting into overpopulation in the past. CorruptUser (talk) 18:17, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * in the modern factories I used to work in you could train a monkey to do the work. How do you deal with child labour in developing countries how does one deal with families and children in abject poverty who would simply starve without child labour? AMassiveGay (talk) 22:55, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think there is a useful distinction to be made between "child labour that has historically been part of locally-oriented economies" and "child labour that is part and parcel of the extraction of wealth from the so-called 'developing world' for the benefit of corporations in the West." A kid working her family's rice farm and a kid sewing t-shirts for JC Penney in the Philippines are both "child labour," but they're not caught in the same situation, and would therefore not benefit from similar interventions. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 23:03, 14 May 2015 (UTC)