Welcome to half-past December. The U.S. House of (Un-)Representatives have already gone home until January 9th. I wonder how many of the people they (un-)represent would like to have a paid three week holiday for Christmas and New Year's.
Jezebel has this latest atrocity by the Florida legislature. They are trying to drastically roll back child labor laws--Oh, excuse me--they are "liberating" "youth workers." That kind of "liberation" we can do without. I have felt for some years now that we were going backward to some bad old days. Victorian employers had a "youth worker" wage--about a quarter of what an adult man earned and half of what an adult woman earned. It took the combined earnings of a couple and every child over the age of 6 or 7 to barely survive. It took a hundred years of struggle to finally get to a "living" wage where a man earned enough to support his family on a 40 hour work week. The slogan had been "Eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep, and eight hours for what we wanted." All of the gains are being eroded.
Robert Reich continues his series on the problems with American Capitalism.
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