In Defense Of Deadly Child Labor: F*ck Everybody But ME!

[anon48584343]

@anon65652885

I describe my hometown as “the kind of place where everybody knows somebody with a chainsaw scar.”

So, somewhere in Texas?

[awfulhorrid]

@anon65652885

I describe my hometown as “the kind of place where everybody knows somebody with a chainsaw scar.”

One of the jobs my dad did was logging. I ended up estranged from him and living on my own for a year or two in high school, but word got to me one day that he was in the hospital. Apparently my grandfather’s chainsaw had gotten stuck while cutting down a tree. Dad was coming over to help him when he managed to pull it out of the trunk. It roared to life, of course, and the momentum whipped it around slicing my dad across the abdomen, missing his liver by one or two cm at most. (Given dad was a heavy alcoholic at the time, yet another side effect of being poor, I don’t think a chainsaw slice would have improved his situation any.)

I visited him, of course, a very uneasy visit since the abuse that I had from him was still very fresh in my mind. He lived a few more decades, which meant I did get to see him make 15 years sober and become a completely different person, but that’s a different story.

[moortaktheundea]

@Robert_Janca

But kids are going to be out there working like I was (on heavy equipment out in the heat etc.) wether you experienced that yourself or not.

You know, I took my first job when my age was in the single digits and I don’t think I went to school with many people who didn’t break at least a handful of child labor laws, so I know very well the costs and benefits of child labor. And with all sincerity, that’s a garbage argument. We’re not talking about a kid forging their work permit to start bussing tables a few months early, we’re talking about a saw mill.

@Robert_Janca

Im grateful to see that so many people don’t have to experience growing up poor.

Plenty of us do, lots of us had to talk our friends about how to lie when they went to the hospital and explained their injuries in a way that wouldn’t lead to more questions and we know damn well that every kid killed working is a policy choice. We chose to have a child poverty rate higher than Mexico and Russia. We chose to have a legal system that lets companies kill kids working for them for a slap on the wrist fine. We created and maintain that underclass with each policy decision and people taking it as an unavoidable truth are some of the people working hardest to build that machine.