Remember the good old days?

Most of human history was like this. The 50 year period after WWII is the aberration. If we don't fight the oligarchs this is what they will reduce us to.
- Most of human history...hmm checks notes... since the invention of capitalism about 400 years ago, yes.
  Even serfs under feudal lords had significantly more free time and while basic child labor was common, it was mostly in family run farms.
  
  Instructions unclear, reverted to feudalism, defended literal, inherited pile of manure with violence
  
  Pre-industrial societies still expected children to work from young ages. And they would often switch to adult labour in their early teens.

This is why I get so fucking mad at the tradwife Tiktok people, who go "Oh feminists are forcing you to go to work, I miss the good old days!"
Like no you fucking don't, in the "good old days" since the industrial revolution anyone who wasn't rich had to work their ass off in shit conditions, including women and children. These people never read The Jungle (that shit was horrifying in middle school, and I only read an excerpt), or saw the pictures of coal kids, or the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire back in 1911 that killed 100+ women and girls.
You get to pose for the camera with a full face of makeup and hold your soccer team of kids because your husband is rich and thinks you're hot. Full stop.
- I'm right there with you. Women have always worked and the 50's housewife in the US is a historical blip that women fought to escape.
  
  No, you are wrong and need to understand why.
  The ability to have that 50's housewife was due to a single earner economy. You could be a bagboy at a supermarket and support a family of three ... possibly even own your own home.
  This was taken away. Perspective
  
  I mean that's just not true. I thought everyone learned about how WWII offered women the opportunity to join the workforce in mass numbers for the first time because of the crucial roles that were left open by the men who were off to fight. That's what sparked the transition toward women's right to work at all. Before that, there was no such right. Unless you are counting cooking and cleaning at home, or tending the family farm, as "work", but I don't believe that's what people mean when we are referring to "a woman's right to work".
- don't use tiktok
  
  I never did and I hate the app, this is just the shit I see from Youtubers who cover awful/interesting trends on Tiktok.
- Too many people don't understand that politics decides whether or not they'd be a bonafide slave.
  Without laws in place there would be slaveowners today. Jeff Bezos? Elon Musk? They'd own slaves if they could.
  
  Musk and his family owned slaves in South Africa before the apartheid government was overthrown. They fled to Canada.
- Worst part about the Triangle Waistshirt factory fire is that the owners actually chained the exits and many of the fire exits were so poorly maintained that when the workers tried to escape using them, they collapsed and many fell to their deaths... and when a lawsuit was filed, somehow the judge believed that the whole thing was a whiny conspiracy and they ruled in favor of the owners.

I'd rather burn every city to the fucking ground than rob any of our children of their childhood. Catch my kids standing outside with the molotovs.
- This but also stop them from robbing our adulthoods
- Catch my kids standing outside with the molotovs.
  I can assure you they were doing no such thing. They were dogsitting for me. And reading white-Jesus books.

If the parents are made poor enough, this will come back. Just in case you don't know why they kill social security.
- When I was a kid, my parents would wax poetically about their summers spent picking strawberries and green beans earning 25 cents a day in California Central Valley. They loved it, apparently.
  Good, honest work they told me. Then as I got older they demanded I attend college and get a white collar career established, lol.
  
  Let me wax in: I picked cherries as a kid. Not for poetry, though, but to make some money for myself.

And this photo shows a group of child laborers going in for a 12-hour night shift at a meat packing plant in Kansas, 2025. Just kidding, they will not make the mistake of allowing photography this time around.

Stop showing this shit, Republicans can only get so hard...
- Sorry, couldn't tell...

Orphan grinding machine goes brrrr....
- Conservatives: Won't somebody think of the children?!
  Subtext: as slave labor or sex objects or ideological battlefields or...

And just like the guard on a a meat grinding machine at a packing plant, the law doesn't stop them from sucking in minors

Some more info on this photo:
Photographer: Hine, Lewis Wickes
Flashlight photo of children on night shift going to work at 6 PM on a cold dark December night.
Work shift lasts all night, 12 hours.
They do not come out again until 6:00 AM
Child workers on their way to a night shift at Whitnel Cottton Mills. North Carolina, USA 1908.
- Thank you so much for the link. The clearer image shows the girl at the door has her hand on her hip. I was afraid it might've been a stump. Which could have happened if it were caught in the machinery, though she'd likely have bled to death or been unemployable and starved.

First quarter over quarter GDP gains have been less than expected. We have to look to out of the box solutions, and this blue sky strategy looks like it may show promise. I'll forward this memo up to corporate.

Capitalism Demands Your Sacrifice!

This is the “great” MAGA wants again.

more info: https://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/index.html#mill
OP photo near the bottom

There’s pictures of children in the Coal Breakers. Missing hands. That worked back breaking labor sorting coal from my home town. It’s disgusting what people did to their children for money. Coal fields buried many children.
- They kind of had to otherwise the entire family would starve. It's fucked up, but right now the only reason I am stay afloat is because I live alone in a one room studio apartment with a communal bathroom. My mental health is kind of going to shit, but at least I get to eat.
- Charles Bronson grew up in a coal mining town. Even though everyone worked their asses off, still so poor he sometimes had to wear his sister's dress to school!
  MAGA would have him arrested for that!
  
  They would make dresses and clothing from flour bags. Flour companies recognized this and started shipping colorful bags for mothers to use.
- https://thetruepanopticon.bandcamp.com/track/kentucky
  This whole album is about that. It's totally fucked
  
  I would rather mine Kentucky coal instead of Anthracite coal from my region in Pennsylvania. Anthracite mines are an entirely different way of mining. There’s a documentary I’ll look for on YouTube where the mine operator kills hi self after his cousin and nephews die in a collapse.
  
  Hard Coal Film

Why don't we pity adults in the same situation?
- We do.
- What are you talking about? Of course we do, all the time.
- This is reductive and deflective. We do, one does not come at the price of the other. But most people, and science, agree that kids are worse off in that situation.

So childhood poverty was handled?
/s

My 13 year old kid whines when I maker her clean up her dishes

I get what you’re saying but it is unrealistic in this society. Many industries opt to replace their workers with automated systems. Perhaps this same level of greed has been redirected into newer unregulated ways.
- Are they automating their jobs away to let the rest of humanity live lives of joyous leisure, or will those non-owners who no longer provide utility to the owners just be starved to death?
- Child labor is used all around the world still. Just have to loosen laws a bit and make people poor enough to accept low wages, then it will be (more) of a thing in the US too. Below-living wage is cheaper than automating for many tasks; doesn't require the rich to risk as much capital either.
  
  I agree with that.
- K, so pulling this thread, if children have no value as laborers in the future dystopia no one but the oligarchs wants, what would their for-profit role be? Societal larvae destined to be future laborers with adult human skills not easily automated? In the meantime, how would they 'earn their keep' so-to-speak?
- You do realize several plants in the US have already been caught using child labor, right?
  
  Now its time to compare several to the national total. You did say the US right?