[Draft] Repeal "Restrictions on Child Labor"

[Woryand]

The World Assembly,
Applauding the efforts of GAR #4, a resolution effective in reducing child labor;
Concerned, however, about how this would negatively impact the residents of many nations, particularly those which have a large number of residents living at or barely above a subsistence level of income;
Noting that, in those nations, child labor is a necessary evil due to the alternative being starvation;
Concerned about how section B subsection 7 "[Bans the employment of minors in] work which would preclude the pursuit of a full-time education, such as work for long hours", something that is clearly impossible in many nations if the survival of the child and the child's parents is wanted;
Additionally noting that many nations have education programs that end before the legal age of majority;
Believing that a repeal and replace of this bill is necessary for the aforementioned points;
Hereby Repeals GAR #4 "Restrictions on Child Labor"

[Kenmoria]

(OOC: Welcome to the General Assembly. This idea about replacing GA #004 is certainly legal, which is good, but I don’t think the arguments you present are convincing. If a nation has lots of children at the poverty line then, without education, they are likely to stay there. Working may be a short-term solution, but can’t lead to long-term economic benefits.)

[Woryand]

If a nation has lots of children at the poverty line then, without education, they are likely to stay there. Working may be a short-term solution, but can’t lead to long-term economic benefits.

OOC: The only problem, from what I have found, is that subsistence living quite literally means that everything that you produce is used to keep you alive; a decrease in amounts produced would cause starvation or other similar effects. While this is undesirable, and can lead to an (extreme) poverty trap, this is the sad truth in many nations (most PT ones and I would imagine even a few MT ones).

In addition, even with people in nations who can afford the loss in productivity caused by sending children to school, bills such as GAR #80 don't provide education up to what is the age of majority in most countries.

[Araraukar]

OOC: The only problem, from what I have found, is that subsistence living quite literally means that everything that you produce is used to keep you alive; a decrease in amounts produced would cause starvation or other similar effects. While this is undesirable, and can lead to an (extreme) poverty trap, this is the sad truth in many nations (most PT ones and I would imagine even a few MT ones).

OOC: Minimum Standards of Living requires that the state see to it that everyone has adequate housing and nutrition, though.

[Separatist Peoples]

"A nation that relies on child labor is a nation that needs to refocus it's resources and efforts, not a nation that needs to double-down on their race to the bottom.

"Even if there was no moral argument in favor, permitting child labor enables nations to drop product costs, making it impossible for exporters and producers that do not use child labor to compete and force them to choose between going out of business or themselves utilizing child labor, distracting children from their primary concern: education. As such, your suggested repeal threatens the well-being of our economy and other global economies.

"Opposed."

[Woryand]

OOC: Sorry for the delay in replying to all of this.

OOC: The only problem, from what I have found, is that subsistence living quite literally means that everything that you produce is used to keep you alive; a decrease in amounts produced would cause starvation or other similar effects. While this is undesirable, and can lead to an (extreme) poverty trap, this is the sad truth in many nations (most PT ones and I would imagine even a few MT ones).

OOC: Minimum Standards of Living requires that the state see to it that everyone has adequate housing and nutrition, though.

"It seems as if Minimum Standards of Living makes an exception to this if the nation is going through an economic crisis or if there are otherwise not sufficient resources to give everyone the provisions outlined in said resolution (or the wealth redistribution required would push the total resources to below the amount required for everyone to have the provisions outlined)."

"A nation that relies on child labor is a nation that needs to refocus it's resources and efforts, not a nation that needs to double-down on their race to the bottom.

"Even if there was no moral argument in favor, permitting child labor enables nations to drop product costs, making it impossible for exporters and producers that do not use child labor to compete and force them to choose between going out of business or themselves utilizing child labor, distracting children from their primary concern: education. As such, your suggested repeal threatens the well-being of our economy and other global economies.

"Opposed."

"It is acknowledged that child labor allows product costs to be dropped, harming the production of some items in nations that do not utilize child labor. However, given that the replacement resolution only seeks to permit exceptions in agriculture and a very limited subset of non-agricultural jobs, we believe that this should be a non-issue."

OOC: Fedele proposed this added preamble: "Recognizing that children serve important roles in industry with their ability to fit into tight spaces". What would people think of this?

[Sierra Lyricalia]

OOC: ...I would say that sounds like you want to send Welsh eight year olds back down into the coal mines. This one is going to be a long, hard slog for you.

[Kenmoria]

OOC: Fedele proposed this added preamble: "Recognizing that children serve important roles in industry with their ability to fit into tight spaces". What would people think of this?

(OOC: One of the worst forms of child labour, excluding outright slavery, is that which relies on their small stature. Any space that only a minor can fit into is, fairly obviously, going to be very small, which is not good psychologically or for respiratory purposes. You would be better mentioning the small hands or agility of children, and even then that sounds exploitative.)

[Araraukar]

OOC: Given that most people who will be voting on this are in RL from first world nations, any "children have small hands and can get into tight spots" thing is going to be countered with "but we have robots that can do all that now". There's just no way to justify forbidding children a better future (by denying them time for having an education) that you can spin that won't sound horribly exploitative. If you worry about undeveloped nations or nations suffering some times of calamity, I'd like to point out that there are at least three resolutions out there that require the WA as a whole and individual WA nations separately to aid such nations.

You cannot justify this.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

OOC: Given that most people who will be voting on this are in RL from first world nations, any "children have small hands and can get into tight spots" thing is going to be countered with "but we have robots that can do all that now". There's just no way to justify forbidding children a better future (by denying them time for having an education) that you can spin that won't sound horribly exploitative. If you worry about undeveloped nations or nations suffering some times of calamity, I'd like to point out that there are at least three resolutions out there that require the WA as a whole and individual WA nations separately to aid such nations.

You cannot justify this.

OOC: ...I would say that sounds like you want to send Welsh eight year olds back down into the coal mines. This one is going to be a long, hard slog for you.

Sorry, did I say 8-year-olds, dude? I meant six. And it doesn't take the development of robots for a nation to realize child labor is unjustifiable - keeping your future workforce from becoming educated dooms your country to an eternity of subsistence and degradation.

"Ambassador, no point that you've made here overrides the simple truth that allowing children to work full time and in hazardous occupations is not only ethically abhorrent, but also practically idiotic. If you don't send your children to school, they don't learn extremely basic skills and knowledge necessary to do the kind of work that can lift them and your country out of poverty. If a nation can be compared to a singular organism, child labor is that organism eating itself for sustenance. You're advocating auto-cannibalism of the body politic, ambassador. If the moral argument doesn't convince you, simple thermodynamics should."

[Imperium Anglorum]

I'll inject a passage from my development economics textbook to this discussion, especially since it's quite relevant. Naturally, because economists view the world in terms of trade-offs, it'll probably make everyone mad. Horseshoe theory at its finest. I typed this really fast, my apologies for any errors. But first, a shorter explanation of why child labour exists in relatively broad and general terms (caveating, as is especially relevant in the GA, the non-existence of slavery). It doesn't exist because people are evil and assign labour to children. It doesn't exist because their parents are evil. It exists because households attempting to meet budget constraints in extremely low productivity labour market environments have to leverage their only advantage to survive: their labour. Returning to the passage.

Working conditions are often horrendous; the ILO resorts that some of its surveys show that more than half of child labourers toil for none or more hours [*392]per day. The worst forms of child labour endanger health or well-being, involving hazards, sexual exploitation, trafficking, and debt bondage. In a 2011 publication, the ILO reported that every year, about 22,000 children die as a result of work-related accidents. Clearly, child labour is not an isolated problem but a widespread one...

Nevertheless, it is not obvious that an immediate ban on all forms of child labour is always in the best interests of the child. Without work, a child may become severely malnourished; with work, school fees as well as basic nutrition and health care may be available. But there is a set of circumstances under which both the child labourer and the whole may be unambiguously better off with a ban on child labour: multiple equilibria. Kaushik Basu ahas provided such an analysis and we shall first consider his simple model which shows how this problem may arise.

To model child labour, we make two important assumptions: First, a household with a sufficiently high income would not send its children to work. As one might hope, there is strong evidence that this is true, at least most of the time. Second, child and adult labour are substitutes. In fact, children are not as productive as adults, and adults can do any work that children can do. This assertion is not an assumption; it is a finding of many studies of the productivity of child labourers in many countries. It is is important to emphasise this, because one rationalisation for child labour often heard is that children have special productive abilities, such as small fingers, that make them important for the production of rugs and other products. However, there is no support for this view. In essentially every task that has been studied, including carpet weaving, adult labourers are significantly more productive.

For Kaushik Basu's model, refer Kaushik Basu, Child labour: cause, consequence, and cure, with remarks on international labour standards, 37 J Economic Literature 1101 (1999). At a more broad level, the generally accepted means to solve the issue – which is that all families would be better off if children did not work, since it would depress the labour supply amongst especially low-productivity workers, raising their wages – is to create a conditional cash transfer programme which would give people money and in-kind transfers (e.g. school meals and healthcare) for sending their children to school. This is a response to the fact that for many families, the opportunity cost of sending their children to school, with the direct costs, is too large for them to bear. Lowering that cost is therefore imperative for long-term human capital development policy.

There is some debate over whether unconditional cash transfers to basically all poor people in these areas is as or more effective than conditional cash transfers. Empirical evidence from randomised controlled trials shows that UCT is more effective at long term improvements which reduce the likelihood of teenage pregnancies and marriages. The cost of those UCTs as well is not large relative to those in more conditional cash transfer programmes, with something on the order of 4 dollars per month to parents and 1 dollar per to school-age children. See Sarah Baird et al., Cash or condition? Evidence form a cash transfer experiment, 126 Quarterly J Economics 1709 (2011).

[Bears Armed]

the ILO resorts that some of its surveys show that more than half of child labourers toil for none or more hours [*392]per day.

OOC
presumably "nine" rather than "none"?

[Imperium Anglorum]

Yea. As warned, lol, there are typos.

[Asrtotzka]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Dear comrades,

This ambassador assists stupefied to the discussion of this draft. I hope my words will be understood in the good way and will help to find a great solution.

First of all, childhood is defined in a certain range of years because of the necessary development of the human being before his body is ready to face any kind of effort and his mind reaches a specific level of madurity.

In second place, assuming you find a work a child can perform without damage or comsequences for his physical or phsychic health, we have to agree that if you give children the possibility to work you will have to increase dramatically the offer of workforce, which in an scenario of stable number of jobs, will sink salaries and even force mid-age people to retirement. This effect shows us two serious comsequences:

On one hand, you will lower salaries, so maybe you will give children a salary, but the whole wealth of workers will impoverish due to an aggregate reduction of income.

And, on the other hand, you will not erradicate poverty - you will only displace it to an elder segment of population, exactly a segment that cannot study as efficiently as younger people.

And, in final place, this repeal will finally not only affect the nations that implement child labor, but will also affects neighbours because of the effects of poverty, a possible call effect and, even, insecurity issues due to mafias or similar organizations that could submit children to a kind of slavery.

From our sincerelly experience, we think child poverty will never be solved with child labor, but with social policy. Forget maket law and take advantage of the power of the State to implement actual and feasible solutions that do not ruin children future.

Thank you very much and glory to Asrtotzka!