This just in! There’s a bill currently under review in the senate that will repeal child labor laws! No longer will parents have to fret about what to do with their kids during school break–now we can just put them to work!  All those labor pains, all those middle of the night feedings, the creamed spinach dumped on the floor, the temper tantrums and toys hurled across the room?

It’s payback time, kiddies! Now we won’t have to wait until you’re sixteen to start garnishing your wages–you can start scooping ice cream, making beds, or hell,  putting small screws in large machines (because robots are sooo expensive and your hands are sooo teensy, really the perfect size).  And you can work as long as you want! Isn’t that great? None of that nasty business about going to bed early because you have, you know, school.  School just gets in the way of a living wage, for god’s sake.

Three cheers for Jane Cunningham, who introduced the bill.  She’s a Republican gal from Missouri, the “show me state.” I guess they’re going to show us, all right. Industry is totally going to flock to Missouri now that kids are part of the labor pool. I can hear the corporate taxes raining in already–oh. Wait. You mean Big Biz doesn’t pay a lot of taxes in Missouri, sort of like what happened in Wisconsin? Hmm. Well, kiddie labor is certainly going to increase the profit margin, regardless.

Really, a job well done, Jane. Kudoes. Children everywhere salute you and your firm commitment to returning us to the era of the other Gilded Age, back at the beginning of the 20th century: