The federal government is promising to enact higher minimum wages and strict pro-union rules that will destroy the gig economy.  Some of these rules are already in effect in blue states.  The young will be especially hard hit.

Our youths need an opportunity to learn how to work and contribute to society.  If they can't find a job, they will remain dependent and feel helpless, driving anger and despair.

Studying the history of communist countries shows that depriving people of the means to become productive in life, to achieve for themselves, is enervating to any society.  Purposeless youths become troubled and cause discord.  They engage in wanton destruction of the type that escalated in America in 2020.

Purposelessness makes causing trouble attractive because it scratches the itch of anger at not being in control of one's life.  The appeal of anarchy when life is encumbered by too many senseless rules is understandable.

Anyone with children sees this dynamic.  We parents give our children chores when they're little so they can learn to take responsibility for themselves and contribute to family life.  We then encourage them to have summer jobs as they get older.  When governments increase minimum wages, those jobs become scarce.  For businesses, it's too expensive to pay the higher minimum wage to a teen trainee who is probably only half as productive as a more mature worker.

For years, our insane internship rules have prevented teens from doing any productive work without pay because the state doesn't want work taken from adult employees.  The law states, in essence, that an intern can't do any task that someone being paid to work might do.

Obeying the law means an internship is an idle, meaningless exercise in lack of accomplishment.  There are time limitations, as well, before the pay clock starts ticking.

All this rule-making normalizes idleness.  Drugs, violence, and acting out will follow.  Having a sense of purpose elevates every individual.  If we don't give kids the opportunity to use what they're taught in school, or the tools to set realistic goals that can be achieved and become signposts for their future success, we turn them into selfish, unthinking adults, without a positive self-image or moral compass.

After WWII and before Vietnam, kids had a well mapped path: school, then college or trade school (and many public schools had shop classes for those not on a strict academic track), then perhaps an advanced degree or further trade training to increase earnings.  Along the way, young people often worked to help pay for their schooling.  The endgame was always to become self-reliant.

This track led to family life as a productive and responsible adult.  Go back and watch any of the 1950s TV dramas and sitcoms, like Lassie or Leave It to Beaver.  Now they seem so simplistic, so naïve; back then, they were just normal.  In all of them, kids had chores, and life was a purposeful journey to adult responsibility.

In 2021, we already have a large youth contingent making trouble — a problem we've exacerbated by closing schools.  We've distanced ourselves from the sensible routines of life, with predictable results.  As government creates more work rules, it escalates these issues.  The rules, which are intended solely to enrich unions and other donor groups, prevent us from raising our children to be responsible.

The Democrat oligopolists want to force conformity of thought and action, but they are instead enforcing trouble.  They thrive on control, which they'll never be able to achieve no matter how much they tighten the straight jacket buckles.  Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly obvious that they care nothing for the lives of their "constituents."

Along with destroying young people's futures, eliminating the gig economy will make parents scramble to keep food on the table.  People who have had children at home for the last year without relief have needed creative ways to care for them, and the flexibility of gig work gave that to them.  They don't need to pay union dues and work on an imposed schedule, and the companies that employ them don't want that, either.

We need to take back the many things we've given up.  We need to raise our kids knowing they can take care of themselves and, perhaps, help take care of us when we get old.  To do that, our youths need permission to find meaning in life through work.  We need fewer rules, not more.

The bottom line is that our representatives need to be made to represent us, and not the special interest groups that shower money on them.  There are some who listen and work for us, but most do not.  We need to make that the standard of judgment for all of them, regardless of party.  We need to elect people who treat us as humans with self-respect, not as subjects.

Image: Teen mobs in Chicago.  YouTube screen grab.