Top 10 Worst “Accomplishments” of the American Labor Movement

9. Child labor laws

Children used to work side by side with parents in the fields and in the home. Since children contributed to the well-being of parents from an early age, parents had a strong incentive to bring many children into the world and to feed and clothe and nurture them. While having children was understood as an investment in the future, and many parents also expected to be supported by their grown children in their old age, children received on the job training from an early age, and long before they were adults, they acquired the skills that they would need to support themselves and their families. When the Labor Movement passed laws forbidding children to work, they made bringing children into the world  a luxury rather than a necessity.

As the value of children to their families plummeted, many people chose not to have any children at all or had greatly reduced families. Today, in the United States, children do not even begin to have the opportunity to work until age sixteen or seventeen, depending on the jurisdiction. They spend most of their time being idle, and when they do arrive at the age of majority, many of them are unfit to work, because they have never experienced the real world and have no marketable skills. Because children have become a liability and not an asset to their families, the birth rate has been greatly reduced. When young people do begin to work, they are expected to support all their elders through tax contributions, and they hardly get to keep any of the money they  make. So if you wonder why we have such a lopsided, elder-heavy demographic, you can thank the Labor Movement.