The Struggles of Child Labor

Child labor is defined as the employment of children, often belonging to the age group of 5 to 17 years. At such a young age, children are a lot less demanding and could be very easily managed by the employees. Many unorganized small sectors around the world prefer to employ children for they are less demanding and easily manageable. I believe that at the ages of 5-12 child labor should be considered a crime. The families of the children, themselves push the children into child labor for want of money or they find it unable to feed the children. The children often live in unhygienic and deprived conditions, with no medical aid at all as well as no education opportunity. Child labor forces a child into the vicious cycle of deprivation, illiteracy and poverty. As adults the children are not able to find suitable jobs and are often regarded as socially backward. They live a solitary life of isolation and often take to unwanted and unethical means.

Marijuana should be legalized because it has medicinal benefits and it is no worse than other drugs. I believe marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes. It helps medical conditions as a more natural substitute to pharmaceuticals. I have a friend whose cousin was diagnosed with epilepsy and marijuana has helped him with his seizures. I believe that the crime would be lower if they legalized marijuana, it would put a lot of drug dealers out of business. People should also be allowed to have control over their own body and not have the government intervene in it, we would also have more control over it by allowing a federal agency to tax and regulate it like alcohol.

As reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are 2 million adults behind bars in the United States, a figure that far exceeds other industrialized nations. The prison and jail population, begun to decline slightly since 2010 at a rate about 1 percent each year. The 2.2 million adults that are incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails, equals to about 1 in very 100 adults. Incarceration is characterized by the differences against young adult men who are minorities, especially African Americans. 1 in 15 black adult men are incarcerated compared to 1 in 36 for Hispanic men and 1 in 106 for white men. I believe that mega prisons should be abolished because 70 percent of prisoners are there for non-violent crimes. Prison keeps these people in a controlled, violent, isolated environment and brands them as criminals rather than coming to terms with the social issues that have shaped their circumstances, and the way they have been victimized because of it. To deal with the social problems that lead to crime, we need to change the infrastructure of our society. We need better housing, mental health, domestic violence services as well as a basic income.

Poverty and homelessness can be eliminated because if we are able to address the root causes of homelessness, such as affordable housing, income, discrimination and violence, the we can prevent the cycle of poverty and homelessness that families are experiencing. The services provided to families experiencing poverty or homelessness must be better coordinated. This includes income assistance programs, education, child welfare and social housing. To assist families at risk and provide them with opportunities to escape the cycle, these services must be supported and implemented in a way that matches the needs of families experiencing homelessness. 1 in 30 children in the United States experience homelessness annually. Nearly 1.4 million school children were homeless in school year 2016-17. We need to start by viewing and treating poverty and homelessness as what they are, human and civil rights issues.

Employers should not be able to pay men more than women; lower earnings make it harder for women to take care of their families. A report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that if women were paid fairly, single women’s income would rise by 13.4 percent, single mothers would earn 17 percent more, and married women would increase by 6 percent. Women also earn less when it comes to benefits such as social security, pensions and employer provided health care. Men are increasingly turning to women as a source of financial support as America’s economic crisis worsens. The unemployment rate among adult men has risen 2.8 percent over the past year. Women with more education lose more income. Lower wages for women also hurt society. State and federal social programs funded by income and wage taxes are affected by the wage gap. If women are making less money, tax revenues are lower than they should be.

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