Business/Showcase

from 2021 Fall Pilot

Traveling

A Satirical Proposal

by Benjamin Doerr

Ever since Covid-19 began, blue-collar companies across the nation have been plagued with a chronic lack of workers. A simple drive downtown in any city reveals a plethora of “Help Wanted” and “Now Hiring” signs. Companies are looking for 1 million more workers than there are people looking for work. They are going to extreme lengths: according to CNBC, 19% of companies are offering pet insurance to prospective employees! Although companies have been trying hard to get these workers, results are minimal. To gain workers without excessive incentive, a source of unused labor lies right under our nose. In your formative years, your parents likely sent you off to child care and then to preschool and kindergarten, where you learned early skills such as basic arithmetic and reading and writing. Right? No, in most cases, kids don’t learn to read until first or even second grade and basic addition isn’t taught until first grade. So, what do kids do in preschool? Frankly, not much: they may learn simple concepts such as the alphabet or fire safety, subjects that kids often can learn outside of school either naturally or in a matter of minutes. Children can surely learn to “Stop, Drop, and Roll” in less than a week. The rest of preschool generally consists simply of keeping the children contented and contained. The fertile minds of youth can certainly be put to better use than such basic tasks. The obvious solution to both of these problems is to put the children to work. Most of the positions hiring right now are unskilled jobs like pushing buttons on a cash register, sticking stickers to items, or watering plants. These positions were left open because an unskilled worker is generally easier to find than a skilled worker, so unskilled workers were more likely to be fired during the pandemic. At the same time, children are less likely to catch Covid-19 and therefore less of a threat to the workplace. These children, being three to six years old, are eager to try new things and their young minds are perfectly suited to learning simple repeatable tasks. You may be wondering if children are capable of performing such work. Now, it is unlikely that the children will be put to work on dangerous manufacturing work, because their clumsy fingers are liable to wreak havoc. However, studies show that children are much faster learners than adults, and tasks that neither an adult nor a child have ever done before are likely to be perfected by the child before the adult by a considerable amount. Such children may not learn much in the lack of rigor provided by a preschool or daycare environment, but they certainly have the capability to. Relatively straightforward tasks such as operating machinery would be taught to children easily. Now, with children in the workforce, accommodations would have to be made. First of all, their height alone would call for certain changes to the places where they work. Further, they would need shorter hours and tighter supervision, ultimately resulting in lower pay for the children than for an adult. However, the advantages are clear. Not only are the companies provided with efficient workers, but the children benefit immensely. Already having learned a workable job, the children head into grade school with work on their resume. These children also will have a pool of money that parents could choose to set aside into investments that would produce large returns by their high school years. Not only this, but parents would be relieved of the massive financial burden of child care. Rather than being a burden to society, these children would become a boon. There may be other concerns, such as mistreatment or unfair advocacy. However, in today’s progressive society, those issues would certainly be quickly resolved; parents would be sure to keep an eye on their children’s workplace. But among all of these doubts, it is clear that this system would provide massive benefits to the economy. Any workers displaced by this new source of employees would be more likely to pursue a skilled job, lifting millions out of poverty and serving society wholly. It’s time to let our kids be useful!