[HN Gopher] A photographer who forced the U.S. to confront its c...
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A photographer who forced the U.S. to confront its child labor
problem
Author : cratermoon
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-06-13 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| xyst wrote:
| The US may have reformed child labor laws state side but the US
| still has a problem with child labor. It's just outsourced to
| countries with none to lax laws on their labor force.
|
| Even today the US is seeing a rise in child labor law violations:
| https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1157368469/child-labor-violat...
| cassac wrote:
| One thing I often wonder is if the US could have pulled off WW2
| without these kids having this experience. They would have been
| at their prime at the time and would have had the grit and know
| how to get stuff done that maybe the following or previous
| generations wouldn't have. I'm not condoning it in any way, just
| something I ponder.
| munificent wrote:
| One could equally wonder whether the US would have been even
| more effective during and after WWII if it hadn't squandered
| the formative years of many of its children on nonsense like
| shucking oysters when they could have been learning.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I think this is an impossible question to answer, but proposing
| it implicitly condones child labor as a component of the
| "return to greatness" that so many on the right desire.
| dmbche wrote:
| Amazing work! Suprising to hear that he had to heart that the US
| had to embrace immigration as part of it's identity while there
| were large xenophobic sentiments. Nothing new under the sun!
|
| To this day, I'm still appalled that child labor laws don't apply
| to international goods - it's a little nuts that we say we're
| against it, but we allow the sale of good made from it still.
| It'd be neat to force manufacturers to prove no child labor to
| export to no child labor countries. Anyhoot
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that child labor is on the rise again
| in the United States [0]. From the article:
|
| > The number of minors employed in violation of child-labor
| laws last year was up thirty-seven per cent from the previous
| year, according to the Department of Labor, and up two hundred
| and eighty-three per cent from 2015. (These are violations
| caught by government, so they likely represent a fraction of
| the real number.)
|
| 0. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/child-labor-
| is...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Importation of goods made with child or slave labor has been
| illegal for ~100 years. It is just extremely difficult to track
| and prosecute. If I buy a product on Taobao, what would the
| proof of no child labor be? What about the components? Like the
| battery might be made by adults, but where did the lithium come
| from? You'd need a paper trial going back to natural resource
| extraction to keep it clean.
|
| Maybe keep it simple and put heavy tariffs on countries that
| don't police their own child/slave labor.
| dmbche wrote:
| Thank you for the insight!
| JohnFen wrote:
| > countries that don't police their own child/slave labor.
|
| Which appears to be something the US should do, too.
| jfidbfidvdid wrote:
| > To this day, I'm still appalled that child labor laws don't
| apply to international goods
|
| doesn't apply to us goods either.
|
| did everyone already forgot the meat packing plant (top 50
| largest company in the world ot something) caught using
| children to clean the plant at night?
|
| no photographer would get into those plants today though.
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(page generated 2023-06-13 23:00 UTC)