Child labor. Who would have ever imagined that we would be talking about this again?

Here we are in 2023 looking at multiple states proposing and in some cases in acting

rollbacks of their existing child labor laws.

If you believe as we do that an economy grows from the middle out,

you want an educated, well-trained workforce and you don't get that by working school-age children.

From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics,

with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

I'm Nick Henauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.

I'm wondering Nick, you and I are of different generations than of some of our I'm saying we're old

compared to some of our listeners yeah how young a child were you when you first started working in the coal mines?

Well I was actually seven years old when I first started working in the coal mines for my family business.

Not actual coal mine. No. The pillow coal mine. That's right. The pillow mine. My dad would take us to work and I'm not sure for what we did. We fooled around. Yeah, my father was a psychiatrist so I did not work in the family business.

Yeah, I was probably a good thing.

I was maybe worked on a bit on the side,

which has made me immune to it.

But you know, it's funny you say that because my my father was poor you know my grandfather was a shoe

salesman so my my father you know waited tables and did odd jobs and stuff as a as a team my mother there was a you know it

small retail business she worked in the store the whole family worked in the

store but my father always told me that one of the reasons why he worked hard and as a doctor my God he worked really long hours was to give me the opportunities that he never had.

And one of those opportunities was not to have to help support the family

through working jobs as a child. That seemed like a social advance. Now I, you know,

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