By Ghost of John Brown -
Every time you think that the Obama Administration couldn't come up with a dumber rule, they surprise you. The latest installment is that the Labor Department thinks that farm kids shouldn't be working on...you guess it, the farm. If you would like to read the Labor Department's press release on the subject, click here.
Perish the thought that a young kid would have to pull themselves away from a XBOX or Nintendo to do some manual labor.
The proposed rules would restrict children under 16 from cultivating tobacco, and operating an power-driven equipment. Children under 18 would be prohibited from being employed in the "storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions." Further, the regulations would prohibit children from "agricultural work with animals and in pesticide handling, timber operations, manure pits and storage bins."
So what is left? Can the kids still go cow-tipping at night, or would that be considered work too?
150 years ago, a lot of rural parents had a dozen or more kids, which is pretty amazing considering that people didn't have toothpaste or deodorant and baths were a weekly occurrence. They had to have that many kids just to have enough labor to take care of the farm. Today, farmers rely a lot more on machinery, but it doesn't just operate itself.The animals have to be fed every day. When harvest time comes, it's all hands on deck for days. Schools don't take a summer break just because the kids are hot. Back when schools became more commonplace, the kids had to work the fields in the summer because that was the only way the family was going to raise their crops.
I understand to a certain extent that "grown-ups" (a class that cannot be found walking the halls of the White House) want to protect kids from getting injured. I get that. But has anyone considered the ramifications of all of this? What happens to the cost of agricultural products when a family farm can't rely on the family any more to help grow crops and raise livestock? If you like paying $3 for a loaf of bread, you're going to love paying $5 for it.
I've had the great opportunity to hire a number of young people out of college. One of the first questions that I ask is "what do your parents do". If the answer is "well, my dad is an accountant in one of the suburbs and my mom is a nurse", my reaction is ho-hum. If a kid tells me that he grew up in a small rural town and his dad was a farmer and he helped dad out milking the cows every morning, then I get a little more excited. Why? Because I know that I'm talking to a young man or woman that actually knows what a work ethic is.
If the farm kids can't work on the farm or at a cattle auction, etc., then where will they work? When you live outside a town of 500 in the rural midwest, it's not like there are dozens of jobs for teenagers. There aren't any GAP stores, or McDonald's, or movie theatres. Does the Labor Department just want the kids to just sit around and watch TV all day?
What will be next? Will the Federal Government force kids to wear bike helmets? Maybe we can outlaw pea-shooters. You wouldn't want the kids to be violent or anything, unless you want them to be a member of SEIU.
This Administration obviously thought that one of Ronald Reagan's greatest jokes was somehow a call to arms: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
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