It’s the meme that started it all. And while we all laughed about it, we were too shy to admit that they were kinda right. That’s why, heading into election season, I am once again challenging any of the major parties to announce their plan to bring back child labour. Hear me out.
Firstly, this would immediately solve any labour shortages we have in the country. Overnight. Sorted. Give the kids all the delicate jobs that require dextrous little hands, and let the adults work the more artisan jobs like flying aeroplanes or making silly little magazines.
Second, kids need to start learning early that if you can’t adapt your body and mind to the 9-5 grind, you might as well die. School is already a noble effort to conform them to the mentality of deadlines, workdays and cookie-cutter corporate policy, but we can do better. Skip the middleman and just give them a real job. They all say they don’t want to be in school anyway, so we should honour that wish and let them have a go at it. The sooner they conform, the easier it is for all of us. Plus, no more worrying about daycare.
Also, your household income rates are about to skyrocket, so you can kiss that recession goodbye. Immoral labour? Never heard of her. In fact, I can’t hear much of anything over the constant din of societal progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you can bet that child labour laid a few bricks. How are we meant to improve as a society if we’re too woke to put literal children back in literal goldmines?
Letting children take the “undesirable” jobs would also go a long way in improving racism in this country. Currently, our only scapegoats for labour shortages are those filthy immigrants, the ones who come here and take all the jobs we didn’t want to do anyway. If we just put children in those jobs, we can’t have immigration! With that pesky back door closed once and for all, we can get back to what really matters: keeping our country clean. Because it’s OUR country, after all, and we need to preserve it. You know, for the children.
Finally, as I’ve said a million times and will say once again, we have to trust the market. If it’s suggesting that child labour needs to come back, we are in absolutely no position to question it. Especially once we scrap all of the ease-of-access policies set up to help guide those minors (miners?) into “liberal” arts university programmes, where - God forbid - their brains might grow. No. What we need, and what the market is clearly telling us to acquire, is a veritable army of stupid, brainwashed, nimble little labourers who are without any means of standing up for themselves (because even if they did, they’d only come up to, what, like 3’4”?).
I say we listen to our collective gut, nay, to the wisdom of the infallible market, and put children back in the mines. Put children back in the factories, in the fields, in the full range of jobs for which they so loudly clamour. Who are we to stop them? Who are we to question the will of the all-consuming market? This nation must be one of the children, by the children and for the children, and to achieve that most noble of standards, we simply must let the children return to the mines.
If any major party should be brave enough to consider this agenda, they would certainly have my vote. If I could vote, which I can’t, because I’m not a citizen. Just know that it would be a really cool thing for you to do.