Gingrich Thinks Child Labor Laws Are “Truly Stupid”, Exploiting Children A Better Option

Support for child-labor laws was taken as a given for much of the 20th century. Not anymore.

Newt Gingrich proposed a plan Friday that would allow poor children to clean their schools for money, saying such a setup would both allow students to earn income and endow them with a strong work ethic.

Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the former House Speaker said his system would be an improvement on current child labor laws, which he called “truly stupid.”

As Gingrich sees it, children who go to school but don’t take on part-time jobs get “entrapped” by poverty. The disgraced former House Speaker would prefer that school districts fire “unionized janitors,” and instead pay kids to maintain their own schools.

In Gingrich’s model, children would start earning outside income as early as age 9. He wasn’t kidding.