Nathan Newman takes on Nicholas Kristof, child labour apologist:
Repeat that– you take a job away from a child, you are creating a job slot for an adult, improving his bargaining leverage, and increasing the collective wages paid to the poor in the developing world.
Those who talk about the benefits of child labor invariably tell some story of a particular child, but ignore how the pathetic wages paid to that one child has undermined wages for adults in that country overall. This is why child labor was banned in the United States– not just because of empathy for children but from hard-headed strategy to deny corporations an easy way to avoid paying adult wages.
When folks like Kristof fail to acknowledge that basic point, common to any real discussion of child labor regulation, he is being either dishonest or ignorant. He could propose some reason why it’s good to leave adults unemployed in favor of putting children to work, but if he ignores that basic problem, he isn’t even close to making a serious analysis of child labor in the world.