The only effect of more stringent enforcement of anti child-labor legislation is to harm the children involved. You may
At 19:37 29/07/96 +-200, Bart Croughs wrote: think that the millions of families in Third World countries who are too poor to provide for their children, will be magically become rich enough to send their children to school once the anti child-labor legislation will be enforced. < This is getting off-topic, if there is such a thing on this list, but anyway... of course legislation alone is no good. Typically, it is accompanied by efforts to provide alternate livelihood to the older children or parents, free schooling, etc.
Child labour in the West didn't stop because of anti child-labour laws; it stopped the moment the people became rich enough to provide for their children, thanks to the capitalist revolution in the 18th & 19th century. The same path will have to be followed by the Third World countries today.<
Instead of posting to the net to increase outrage about the violations of harmful child labour laws, you better begin posting to the net to increase outrage about the socialist governments in
Take your point, though we may be talking chicken and egg here. If you have lots of children, you and your children never will become rich enough to change... the Third World that keep their populations in poverty.< Socialism as an economic philosophy is fairly discredited, and is on its way out without my expressions of outrage needed to help it along. Yet, the capitalist economy seems to be no better at dealing with extreme poverty. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta@cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta@cerfnet.com for public key