Stop Newt Before He Gets THE CHILDREN

GET IN MAH BELLY!

When I was 15, I had a work-study job at my Catholic high school. Twice a week I cleaned up the art room. I didn't like it very much, but I did it.

Newt Gingrich basically suggested the same thing (h/t Protein Wisdom). Actually, he suggested something better, because the kid janitors would be paid in actual cash money. All I got for cleaning clay-wheels every week was a break on my tuition.

Naturally, proggies shriek in terrified indignation:

You are probably one of the most disgusting human beings I’ve never met!
I want my neighbors 9yr olds or 14 yr olds cleaning up behind my children while I focus my children onto focusing on their education and letting my children to be “KIDS”.
Everyone knows that you Repugnants wants to model our society after China and make everyone a slave to Corpratism. We get it!
I don’t mind working my fingers to the bone but………….CHILDREN…………Really???

We are constantly told that poor kids are forced into the drug trade or worse from lack of economic opportunity. I don't see how giving a kid a job that pays $8-16 an hour doesn't constitute an economic opportunity. Nowhere does Newt say that the child labor laws would be abolished; at best, they'd be amended. We're not talking about a 12-year-old working 40+ hours a week and missing out on school; we're talking about maybe 10 hours a week, before or after school and weekends.

Am I really to believe that a kid who grows up in a poor, dilapidated neighborhood, with one or more parents missing, getting no breakfast except what the school provides, marking time in a broken public school earning a diploma that won't be worth the paper it's printed on would be objectively HARMED by earning some money pushing a mop around?

Really?