I agree that the distinction is important. The argument is that if there were a way to have the child do something nice, the sweatshop wouldn’t have to close down for that to happen. If I had to guess, extremely poor families do not have the slack to increase lifetime earnings by delaying immediate income from their children working. The book noted that subsidizing families who send kids to school does decrease child labor, while embargoes on sweatshops does not (IIRC).
If that’s the case, I believe it illustrates a failing of economics. If there are enough resources available in the country for every child to go to school and their families to still eat, but only the top (say) 20% of children can go to school, and the bottom 80% must work in order to economically justify their families receiving food, then everyone loses in the long run. Yet, the people who make the food have no individual incentive to give it to the families of the children, unless they work...
To clarify: when you say “a failing of economics”, do you mean something like “there must be bad economic policy going on here”, or something more like “the field of economics is failing to make correct predictions”?
I agree that the distinction is important. The argument is that if there were a way to have the child do something nice, the sweatshop wouldn’t have to close down for that to happen. If I had to guess, extremely poor families do not have the slack to increase lifetime earnings by delaying immediate income from their children working. The book noted that subsidizing families who send kids to school does decrease child labor, while embargoes on sweatshops does not (IIRC).
If that’s the case, I believe it illustrates a failing of economics. If there are enough resources available in the country for every child to go to school and their families to still eat, but only the top (say) 20% of children can go to school, and the bottom 80% must work in order to economically justify their families receiving food, then everyone loses in the long run. Yet, the people who make the food have no individual incentive to give it to the families of the children, unless they work...
To clarify: when you say “a failing of economics”, do you mean something like “there must be bad economic policy going on here”, or something more like “the field of economics is failing to make correct predictions”?