A movement to weaken American child labor protections at the state level began in 2022. By June 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, New Jersey and New Hampshire had enacted this kind of legislation, and lawmakers in at least another eight states had introduced similar measures.
They want more people in the work force. I’ve been working since I was 16. They just want to squeeze as much labor out of us as they can. Lower the age to 12 and that’s 4 more years. Raise the retirement age couple of years, and put people in a position where they can’t really retire (hence getting rid of student loan debt forgiveness). Hell, a lot of people already can’t retire. We’re born, basically have about 4 years off, then it’s school, maybe college. Most people are already in the work force in some capacity by high school. And that’s basically it. Work til we die. That’s our life lol. Oh, except for the ultra rich. They don’t have to do shit.
I honestly wonder why we expect ourselves to work so much. Spoiler: rich people work significantly less.
It’s because the system is designed in such a way in the US that it conditions us to think like that. The US modern school system is literally based off working in factories, so it’s no surprise that we’ve been conditioned that we need to work to work so much because we’ve been raised in an environment that mimics a work environment for around 14+ years of our lives. It’s kinda fucked up.
And at the same time we can invent automation - but not for manual labors jobs, just the creative roles.