by Jarad Perry
Let’s face it; the economy is on a downward slope to stagnantville with no end in sight. Unemployment is slowly ratcheting up to over 10% and the American banker, auto worker, and government employee are all facing a tough time right now, all the while jobs are being shipped overseas to India, China and other far flung third world countries. With such problems in the United States is it any wonder that all are looking to any alternative to fix the job market, stock market, meat market or any other market, what have you, just to make ends meet. How can this be happening, you may ask, America is the land of opportunity? It is filled with all manners of natural resources and lest we forget, human resources. A plethora of human resources are at our fingertips, if only we look in the right places. In 2007 the United States had 73.9 million children and is projected to have 80 million by 2020[i]. That is a vast untapped river of human capital just aching for the damming and using to power the engines of America.
“Children are our future” people of all political stripes bemoan, and I agree, but the future is tomorrow and America needs help today. It was the philosopher George Bernard Shaw who once waxed eloquent that “Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on the children”, and it is a crime, or should be, to have all those little scamps live off our dime for years whether they be ours or go to schools funded by our tax dollars. Aren’t children taught in kindergarten that ‘sharing is caring’ and yet they seem happy to take all the goods and caring and not share a damn bit. Well it’s wrong and needs to stop, because if we are to fund their education they better start pulling their weight.
“We are all in this together”, people cry out with much fervor and vocalization, and I agree, that is why child labor needs to be legal. Yes I said it, what everyone is already thinking and would not dare to say without being ridiculed and ostracized. Such thoughts need to be thrown to the wild pack of wolves that is the public and chewed a bit so they can get a taste for what I am proposing.
Children are little bundles of energy, energy that is often wasted on silly games of fantasy and merriment, which could instead be utilized in a more utilitarian manner to provide for society by generating much needed tax revenues. How are we to pay for the much needed $787 billion stimulus, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, bailout bailouts or what have you? I mean money just doesn’t just grow on trees, at least not until the trees are cut down, shredded and mashed into a pulp. So what better way to help the empty coffers of the U.S. Treasury than bringing about a new and cheap, source of labor to tax?
Children are shipped off to schools for eight hours a day to learn skills that are suppose to help them in the real world like reading, writing and arithmetic. However, what if we were to put those often wasted hours to better use, say with classes teaching useful technical skills? Schools could contract out entire blocks of time to data entry companies and in return the children can earn milk money and schools can help the taxpayer. It is a win-win for all parties involved. The children win because they are learning skills for the real world as well as earning an honest wage, schools take some of the burden off taxpayers, and companies win because they can cut overhead and labor costs.
However, there are a multitude of possibilities in which schools could contract out time and save money. Arts and craft time in kindergartens could be used to make clothes and shoes instead of those useless and often discarded macaroni pictures that rot on refrigerators; if third world children produce goods people need, surely good wholesome American children can do it better. Older students could help manufacture electronics, or auto parts and cabinets in shop, or even jewelry for discount stores. Communication class could be used for telemarketing, or taking orders for goods sold on television, or even making infomercials; the sky is the limit, only current laws inhibit such an American ideal of free enterprise. If the communist can do it why can’t Americans? It just seems a pox on all we stand for as a nation.
There are some out there who may wonder if this is not exploiting innocent children and to that I would say that we already exploit children by allowing them to rot their brains in front of video games wasting their natural abilities, and time, with mindless entertainment. If working hard and making an honest wage is being exploited and wrong then I don’t want to be right. One only has to look around to see a generation of children being raised to disdain hard work and achievement. Such a generation does not bode well for America that is why such actions must be taken.
Children should be nurtured educators tell us, and what better way to nurture children then teaching them to make an honest buck by producing a good or service for their fellow man? The children would be learning and growing into productive adults and isn’t that what American needs now, a workforce that is go getting, creative, energetic and of course young, to help share the burden for those who retire into Medicare and Social Security. These two social safety net programs are in desperate need of revenue and I for one don’t think it is ‘just’ to throw the elderly out into the streets. Starting the workforce younger will provide a much needed boost to revenues to ensure that our entire nation’s elderly are taken care of because that is the moral thing to do.
Imagine if we were able to harness the vitality of the young, we would have a second industrial revolution and let us not forget it was children who were instrumental in the first industrial revolution. Children had the small hands necessary to reach into cramped spaces to ensure that the machines kept on running for America; and who can forgot the wide eyed dimpled youth covered in soot, emerging from coals mines bringing forth the energy source that has powered our country for decades. Children cried out the news, shined our shoes, and mowed our lawns. Are such actions wrong, or merely a great life lesson? I would suggest the latter and it is our duty to ensure that children are prepared for life. Children have been an integral part of American history and, as such, should take their place once again in the workforce alongside their elders.
We are told not to discriminate based upon race, religion, gender and AGE, yet we do discriminate against the young’s right to work. Such an injustice should not be tolerated by people of good conscious and must be addressed at once by our government. Flyers, signs and all manner of literature should be thrown from the rooftops telling the honest and noble story of the American child. From the days on the farm to the floors of the factory, all the children of our history should be honored.
So as the economy continues to falter, and America takes its lumps around the world, let us not forgot that it was children that helped build the United States. To this I salute the yet to be newest greatest generation, our futures are in your little hands.
[i] Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008. 2009. http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/demo.asp (accessed June 2009).