Late Stage Capitalism - The Creeping Return of Child Labor in America
I woke up with a pounding in my skull - that's what gas station wine and a six pack of the cheapest piss-colored beer do to a man. I dragged my ass outta bed and took a walk to the McDonalds down the block, 'cause the only cure for this godforsaken state is some cheap greasy food. So there I was, at the golden arches of McDonald's, and fuck me if what I saw next didn't sour my stomach more than the hangover.
The moment I step in, I'm greeted by a cashier who couldn't be more than 14 fucking years old. Now, that alone is enough to get my stomach churning - but hold on, it gets worse. There's this creepy old dude, eyeballing her, spitting sleazy lines, and it's all happening right there in the golden arches. What the actual fuck? Older teenagers working, that's not abnormal, but why the hell is a kid working here? It feels like I've stumbled into a Dickens' novel, where child labor is just business as usual, might get the paper from one of the newsies on the corner after my burger!
The Boomers, the conservatives, they normalize this shit. They’d probably slap a patriotic sticker on it and call it 'building character.' It's about damn time those of us with a shred of decency speak the fuck up, and that's exactly what I intend to do.
You gotta be some sort of special fucking sadist to want to strip away a child's innocence - their only period of life untouched by capitalist exploitation - to fatten the wallet of some franchise-owning slimeball. Or even worse, to add to the already bloated coffers of some corporate CEO. This outdated, 1950s mentality that kids gotta work their fingers to the bone has got to go. If a business can't exist without exploiting children, then fuck that business. If a business cannot exist without employing children, then the business doesn't need to exist. If a business cannot pay it's employees a living wage, well, it does not need to exist.
You know what the sick truth is? The conservatives are pushing child labor for the simplest, ugliest reason: they want an easy target. You think the average adult knows their labor rights? Fuck no. Now imagine a child. Now Imagine an immigrant child at that, who's probably been ripped away from their family at the border.
In a statement to the Guardian, Skip Mark, a University of Rhode Island professor specializing in labor and human rights said: {...}“Child labor is most common in agriculture where children are maimed, killed, exposed to dangerous chemicals, underpaid, and we’ve known about these issues for decades.”
He added: “Child labor is hard to measure, and most estimates are terrible and should not be taken at face value. Governments don’t want to report how bad child labor is because it makes them look bad. Businesses don’t want to report that they have hired children because then they would have to pay fines. Children and their parents don’t want to report child labor because they need the job to support themselves and would lose their job if it was reported.”
Make no mistake, capitalism is anti-child. Child labor was normalized before, it's still normalized in many respects today, and it's continuing to be normalized. Take a look at this shit right here - Labor Department investigators found two 10-year-olds working till fucking 2 a.m. at a McDonald’s in Louisville, Kentucky. These kids weren't even getting paid! The company was fined 200,000 dollars for 300 minors, which breaks down to about 666 dollars per kid.
Forget the sanitized language of the capitalist mouthpieces - let's call this what it is: Child fucking slavery. It costs 666 dollars to have a child slave in America. Let me say that again - these ain't "underage laborers", they're child fucking slaves. Child slaves! America’s perfectly okay with child slaves as long as Uncle Sam gets his cut. Think about this for a moment, a country built off slavery, in 2023, has child slaves. History is a motherfucker ain't it? Capitalism can't exist without such conditions, no layer of beaurocratic reform and obstruction can change this bare and basic fact. Let me tell ya folks, it's a real fucking short line from the breeding plantations to the anti-choice laws of places like Iowa and Texas. They've said the quiet part out loud, we are chattel, we, the working class, are wage slaves, and our children, well they're gonna be wage slaves too.
You know what the labor department representative said about this, and listen to this closely, you can hear how cucked by capitalism the labor department is “One child injured at work is one too many. Child labor laws exist to ensure that when young people work, the job does not jeopardize their health, well-being or education,” said Garnett-Civils.
But yeah, sure Mr. Labor department, let's throw our kids to back into the textile mills, don't worry, we'll fine 'em if the conditions are unsafe. I'm sure it won't be your 10 year old son at working the slaughter house at 2am, or your 13 year old daughter working the McDonald's register at 11pm on a school night. Of course not, such tasks are reserved for the lessers, for us.
It won't be children of the fat cats that sell us the hard work bullshit that are coughing up blood in English class because they were working until 4am the night before, with no protective gear, spraying cleaning chemicals that are specifically designed to break down blood and bile, what the fuck do you think that does to a child's lungs? Whatever you think it does, I'm sure the elites think it's just the cost of doing business, because you know they say about fines, if you're rich enough, they're just the cost of doing business. As far as I can tell, our neoliberal labor department is in implicit support of child labor, as long as they get their cut of the profits from it.
Here's a radical idea: How about no fucking kids at work? I don't want children working in 'safe' conditions. I don't want kids working, period. But you know who's kids will be working? Our kids. Not the kids of the CEOs and the big bosses, but ours. It's our families who will be forced to work more, give more and live with less, all so the elites can live it up on their mega-yachts and space vacations.
The creeping return of child labor in America should scare the shit out of us. It's a brutal reminder of capitalism's true face. A land of plenty? Sure, for the few who sit atop the pyramid. For the rest of us, it’s suffering and exploitation. Maybe it’s time we tilt those scales of justice back in our favor.
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