[bisby]

If you have a family of 6 (lets assume 2 parents and 4 kids) all working for 50 cents an hour.

Saying "your kids have to go to school and not work" and then paying the adults 3 dollars an hour. The family winds up making more money without the kids having to work. (in this admittedly limited example, the family makes double)

If you take the kids out of the equation without increasing the parental pay, then yes, you'll have a harder time with things, as the family just lost 66% of their income, which will mean cutting back.

So you are correct that it is complicated and "stop kids from working" isn't the FULL answer. But it doesn't mean that there aren't solutions - plenty of countries have child labor laws without falling apart.

[SanFranManDan]

So now the cost of labor went up 6x? Don't you see a problem in that solution? The people only have jobs because labor is so cheap.

Other countries don't have child labor laws because their job market evolved and pushed the low labor cost jobs into other countries.

[bisby]

I agree that labor cost is going to go up. And the whole point of this being enforced from the US side through tariffs and import regulations is so that when country A enacts child labor laws, Apple doesn't just move to country B.

And I'm aware that it's a complicated, sensitive topic. That was my point. But dismissing it entirely because solution X creates problem Y instead of finding solution Y (which probably causes problem Z, which will have a solution eventually too) is not the right answer. Saying "Well we just can't solve this problem, they get to live in squalor and there's NOTHING that can be done to help them" is ridiculous.

[simonh]

So the solution is to conjure up extra magic money from nowhere to make everybody wealthy and happy? If only someone had though of that sooner!