Originally published at: State lawmakers want children to work in bars on school nights to fill "labor shortage" caused by people refusing to work for a pittance | Boing Boing
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If the Dem establishment had the backbone to call out the GOP as the party of child labour, there’s a good chance Republicans would proudly embrace the label at this point. The death cult certainly shows very little shame when it comes to sacrificing kids to Moloch and Mammon when it comes to firearms, and this represents a lot more potential revenue for plutocrats.
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Is there really a labor shortage? I mean, really? Or is there a shortage of people willing to work for pennies while enduring a ton of abuse from customers and still not making enough to actually live in the modern world?
Or is there a shortage of people streaming in from other countries because decades of these people screaming about people from other countries taking your jobs is driving those folks away?
Or is it that they want to cover up their egregious buddies literally having migrant children working those jobs by legalizing the whole thing as cover?
Or is it that people are leaving their shitty states in droves and otherwise not moving there because they’re the bottom in everything except living off Federal tax dollars?
Or is it that this is the perfect scenario of paying less, having kids not in school/doing less in school where they could learn how terrible these people are, getting a new tax base, indoctrinating the next generation to working to death, and kids can’t vote them out yet?
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Not enough people are calling them out as the party of child forced birth.
They literally have no problems with grade school kids becoming mothers.
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According to Republicans, drag story time and learning that slavery existed is an existential threat to our children, but working in meat packing plants and dodging AR-15s at school is just part of growing up. Truly the party of family values.
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They are the party of child workers because they refuse to be the party of fair wages for hard working adults.
They are the party of children birthing children because they refuse to be the party of a woman’s right to healthcare choices, including abortion.
They are the party of children being slaughtered in their schools because they refuse to be the party of sensible laws that reduce gun violence.
They are the party of death and destruction because they refuse to be the party of science, of facts, of reality.
They are the party of traitors, sexists, and racists, because they refuse to be the party of acceptance, understanding, and love.
They are abhorrent, a blight upon our society, and we will not advance until we, the People of these United States, reject their endless destruction of our greatness, which is derived only through progress.
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My guess is there’s donors/politicians who own businesses who heard “paying less”, and stopped listening to any details.
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It’s bewildering to think that shortage of workforce that’s serving drugs to citizens is what’s holding their economy back. Is this the scope of what these politicians think about how the world works?
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Well, I guess we now know what “past glory” the GOP is aiming at - Victorian England. Kids, please take it upon yourselves to read Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
And for the last time: there is no worker shortage, there is a dwindling number of people willing to work for poverty wages in shitty work environments.
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Kids should definitely be alone with drunk men at two am working for tips! Keeps em on the street and outta the schools!
Pretty soon they’ll have to send all the 12 and under strippers home for story hour.
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Seriously; this is from assholes who claim to be so worried about kids being ‘groomed’ …
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GOP is literally the party of child rapists.
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According to the report Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Bro dark money group, is behind most of the child labor lobbying efforts followed by travel, lodging and restaurant interests.
Huh, seems nobody in those groups is lobbying for increased wages to entice folks back to work. 
Wisconsin and Iowa have not increased their min wage keeping the Fed rate of $7.25 yet Ohio did raise their min wage from $9.30 to $10.10.
For decades, conservative billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch, supported efforts to lift restrictions on child labor: In 1980, David Koch, who was the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential pick, ran on a campaign promising the “abolition” of child labor laws.
In 2014, the Cato Institute, a think tank co-founded and funded by the Koch brothers, published “A Case against Child Labor Prohibitions.” In the piece, author Benjamin Powell, argues that child labor is important for “economic growth” in developing countries and, therefore, should not be banned. Working at a sweatshop is “the best option available” to poor children, Powell states.
Wow, that’s some evil thinking.
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It’s not a shortage of labor, it’s a shortage of cheap labor.
My guess is that there are a lot of family-owned businesses that haven’t been able to convince their young children to get interested in taking over the “family legacy” - by the time the kids are of legal age, they want to go off to college and run their own lives their own way. These same businesses are also looking for any way they can replace paid labor, even if they’re paying a nearly-criminal minimum wage.
All under the guise of teaching kids “responsibility.”
After all, “good” kids wouldn’t complain about working conditions or low pay, especially to their parents. It would be interesting if these laws came with a caveat: any child worker would automatically become a member of a nationally structured Union instead of trusting their welfare to a government-run (and politically vulnerable) agency.
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Absolutely. They want your family to give them value.
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LOl. A 14 year old working a bar is absurd. It reminds me of that gangster movie where everyone was kids. (Bugsy Malone, 1976)
“Hard day at the office, Frank?”
“Ah, you know it. The boss was a really riding my ass about those TPS reports.”
“I hear ya. Mom won’t shut up about that book report. I was like, ‘It’s due Friday, I got plenty of time.’”
Lady sets down.
“Oh, hey, toots, what can I get you? All I know how to make is beer.”
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Its really more of an excuse to use undocumented alien child labor. That and the illegal efforts to keep them out of public schools.
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There really isn’t.
Especially in this scenario about working in bars.
Your bar can’t find enough workers who will work at the low wages you want to pay them? Then that’s how the universe is telling you, that bar isn’t needed! In fact no bar anywhere is necessary and any given bar might just not make business sense to have, given the market rates of real estate, materials, and yes labor.
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Hours and type of work are first. Next, “wasteful” safety equipment.
“Hey kid. Let’s remove the guard off that industrial slicer so you can load it faster. But be careful.”
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So how do we solve this problem short of coming together as a community and burning down the homes of certain Republican lawmakers while they are still inside?
