Let the Kids Work!

Allow the kids to work, earning money, feeling valuable, and finding some meaning beyond mere compliance with schoolmasters and bureaucrats. [Gilder's Daily Prophecy] December 10, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [ARCHIVES]( It Looks Like Gold is in Trouble rules of money are quickly being rewritten. Gold is losing its luster. But it could get worse... much worse. I've outlined what's happening... and what you can do right now to get prepared. [Click here to get the details.]( Let the Kids Work! [Jeffrey Tucker]Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, It’s bad enough that we are experiencing the worst inflation in most people’s lifetimes. It’s happening during a tremendous shortage of goods and supply chain breakages. So many features of our production structures are wrecked that it’s hard to list them all. Meanwhile, our politics is an utter wreck, with no hope for fixing anything for a very long time. To top it all off, the labor shortage is acute and getting worse by the day. Half of small businesses report that they cannot get workers. Why not? There are many reasons. Child care is unavailable for moms who want jobs. People have moved away from places like Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island where the problems are worse. The immigrants who want to work are in short supply. There is also an unspoken problem that is deeper and more philosophical. It is a generalized demoralization that has affected many people who would otherwise work in the service industry. The shutdowns sent a message that their jobs are not really important and can be taken away in an instant, replaced by direct cash infusions. Many in this group turned to drugs, alcohol, and just a generalized loss of ambition. The old routines — the presumption that life is about hard work and climbing a professional ladder — were utterly shattered. Now millions who are missing from the workforce have given up on that hope and embraced a do-nothing life to fit in with the cynicism of politics. The rituals of labor and making money as part of a life project were deleted and now they are not coming back. The mask and vaccine mandates do not help either, and even now these are required all over the country. It’s utterly degrading to be forced to mask up while the people you serve can eat and drink without their faces covered. This surely has affected labor shortages. I would love to see an experiment here: change nothing but the mask mandate and see how that goes. See how much that alone alleviates the labor shortage. The Kids Please allow me to go out on a limb here a bit and speculate on what could be another path forward. One solution — if politics really worked in this country — would be to liberalize the restrictions on teen labor. Yes, we call it “child labor” but that’s ridiculous. It conjures up images of 7-year-olds in coal mines. The truth is that the labor laws, shoved down the country’s throat in 1938 as an FDR trick to reduce the number of unemployed, are brutal toward kids. It prevents them from doing exciting things like work in restaurants or hotels or otherwise be part of a world in which they are valued. These laws are also awful for parents. They see their 13-year-olds losing interest in school and turning to other dangerous pursuits that are not good for their bodies and minds. They would love to see them get to work in a meaningful job, perhaps after school or two days a week or on weekends. But the law prohibits it! Unlike when I was a kid, these laws are seriously enforced now. The kids faced enormous abuse over the last two years, torn from their social circles, the friends' circles shattered, the meaning of life itself brought into question with their schools closed while being forced to stay home and go absolutely nowhere. It’s been an appalling cruelty. The least that society could do at this point would be to allow them to enter the world of work and earning money earlier than the age of 16. We should lower the age to 12 or younger. Why not allow them into grocery stores to stock shelves, make burgers in fast food places, or take tickets at the movie theater or whatever it is going to be? Why not let them work in the Amazon warehouses and start saving money? Society thought it was just fine for kids to be in solitary confinement in their homes, but it would be cruel to let them learn the ropes at a modern warehouse or mall? It’s nuts. I’m not talking force. I’m talking opportunity here, some pathway toward making life meaningful and exciting. Get out of the house! Leave the regimentation of the school where they are lectured, hectored, and propagandized. [Urgent for December 10th 2021] The Biggest Market Crash of the last 92 Years? 10th could mark the beginning of the biggest market crash of the last 92 years… Bigger than 2008, 1987, or even 1929. And according to one ex-government insider it all has to do with a number the Biden administration is lying about. Once this number hits the mainstream news it’s game over for America. [ Click here now for the details ]( Revisit the History And let’s be clear about the history of the current restrictions. In 1938, the relationship between child labor and compulsory school was direct. It was at the very time that governments at the state and local level were banning labor for kids that these same kids were subjected to force in making them go to school. You can talk all you want about capitalist exploitation, but it makes no sense to overlook a situation surely as problematic: any kid not in his or her school desk was subjected to be kidnapped in the name of enforcing laws against so-called truancy. A system that worked without coercion was displaced by a system that depended fundamentally on coercion. Today, they are forcibly kept out of the workforce and then we are shocked to discover that the average college graduate today has a hard time getting into his or her groove at the age of 23. It’s because their human right to work and earn has been violated for a good part of their lives, to the point that they have lost interest in and knowledge of what work is like at all. When I was a kid, you could get around the laws if you knew the right people. Or you could just lie about your age. I was moving pianos at 12, digging water wells at 13, sweeping floors and crushing boxes at 14. These are extremely fond memories for me. No more. The laws are heavily enforced, and any employer who hires underage is subjected to terrifying penalties. Meanwhile, the kids were forced to stare at their computers from their bedrooms for two years. Plus, we have a massive labor shortage! It’s all crazy. A century ago, we invented a system that imagined children as civic soldiers. Kids bolted to chairs with absolutely no skin in the game have abstract “information” pounded into their heads by tax-paid instructors who teach from state-approved books. Then they had their own schools shut! It’s no wonder we have a crisis of demoralization among the youth. We push these kids through the system and deny them any chance to realize their human value in gainful employment in a community of productivity and real learning. Then we shut their schools and demand that they stay away from everyone else. Now we tell them to scrape together $100,000 for yet another degree that will somehow gain them entry into the workforce, but all these demoralized and cynical kids end up with is an empty CV and 15 years of debt. By comparison, holding down a real job and getting paid would be a tremendous liberation. It’s time we stop congratulating ourselves for taking away opportunities from kids. Their lives have been utterly wrecked. A slight consolation would be to allow the kids to work, earning money, feeling valuable, and finding some meaning beyond mere compliance with schoolmasters and bureaucrats. Regards, [Jeffrey Tucker] Jeffrey Tucker America’s top futurist: Don’t buy bitcoin – buy THIS instead of America’s best connected tech forecasters recently revealed the name and ticker symbol of one of his top stock ideas for the next decade. It’s part of an new, trillion-dollar opportunity that he believes is much more important – and potentially more lucrative than bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency). [Get the details here](. [Three founders Publishing]( To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, feel free to [click here](. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy](. Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read [our Privacy Statement.]( For any further comments or concerns please email us at GildersDailyProphecy@threefounderspublishing.com. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. 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