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Under capitalism this inevitably leads to minors being required to do part-time labor.
Minors with walking around money incentivize vendors to raise prices and landlords raise rents, and meanwhile wages fall because the supply of labor goes up. So instead of families needing 2 incomes to survive, now they need 3 (or 4 or 5 or-). Then the economy comes to rely on the additional part-time labor, no one cleans the park unless the teens do it.
That makes sense.
I guess I should have made this clearer in the post but I guess my question was more what actual policy would a hypothetical current socialist government should have on this. Like where much of the economy is still market instead of socialist.
In early stages of development I could see underage labor being necessary, but I just don't think it has a place at higher stages of development beyond being purely educational. A well functioning socialist state doesn't need or want teens to clean the park because they already have a well paid team of adults dedicated to that job.
beyond being purely educational
I even wonder about this because of the concepts of internships, practicum, co-op learning, placements, unpaid training etc. Which extend into adulthood. In some places/industries are de rigur the only way to get in.
I think people should get paid for learning how to do a job. As long as we need money to live.
Let me rephrase.
Hour-for-hour, underage labor simply isn't as productive as adult labor. Its uses are either logistical (there aren't enough adult laborers to do the work) or criminal (teens can be more easily exploited). In an advanced society there shouldn't be any need for teens to do any work, because there aren't labor shortages and bourgeois criminals go to prison instead of paying fines.
In such a society the only reason for teens to be doing work is if they were learning. They simply aren't needed for anything else. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be paid, but rather, that the purpose of hiring teens is to teach them. Their labor is surplus.
Nah kids shouldn't work and we should make society so that kids don't have to work.
Maybe there should be a ubi for kids so they have some spending money.
Odd jobs around the neighborhood is cool and good. Getting a job as a kid...fuck that shit. Children shoildnt have to clean up the parks unless they want to. I was a productive as fuck little skate rat and I found having a job interfered with the sick diy park we were building by breaking into a an abandoned shipyard. I have never worked harder or more passionately on anything and we had a dolid crew of 30 or so dirtbag kids helping out. Having a job sucks cause I cant do productive shit anymore.
Quick answer, it's survival. Under capital, kids need to learn how to navigate the wage labor market, and even help with familial income in a lot of cases.
A general prohibition of child labor is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society. [Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme]
In Capital Marx explains at length:
As meager as the education clauses in the Factory Acts generally seem, they did make elementary schooling into a condition of child labor. Their success showed for the first time that it is possible to combine education and gymnastics with manual labor, and thus that is possible to combine manual labor with education and gymnastics. The factory inspectors soon learned (while interviewing schoolmasters) that even though the factory children spent half as much time in the classroom as the regular students, they were learning just as much—often even more. “This can be accounted for by the simple fact that, with only being at school for one half the day, they are always fresh, and nearly always ready and willing to receive instruction. The system on which they work, half manual labour and half school, renders each employment a rest and a relief to the other; and consequently, both are far more congenial to the child, than would be the case were he kept constantly at one. It is quite clear that, a boy who has been at school all morning cannot (in hot weather particularly), cope with one who comes fresh and bright from his work.” We find further supporting evidence in Senior’s 1863 speech at the Social Science Congress in Edinburgh. Among other things, he demonstrates here that the monotonous, unproductive, overlong school day of children in the middle and more advanced classes adds to the teacher’s workload for no good reason: “We are employing labour on the part of our masters, and time, health, and energy on the part of our children, not only fruitlessly, but absolutely mischievously.” From the factory system, as Robert Owen shows in detail, sprouts the bud of the education of the future. Productive labor will be combined with education and gymnastics for all children over a certain age, not only because this is a way to increase social production, but also because it is the only way to produce fully developed human beings.
The polytechnic and agronomical schools that arose spontaneously on the foundation of large-scale industry were one moment in this process of transformation. Another was the “ecole d’enseignement professionnel,” where workers’ children have received some instruction in technology and also learned how to use different instruments of production. If the Factory Act, that minimal first concession extracted from capital, managed only to combine elementary education with factory labor, there can be no doubt that when the working class seizes political power, as it inevitably will, technological instruction of both the practical and theoretical kind will win a place in workers’ schools.
On the one hand it doesn't make sense to have a certain age where you are just plunged into a totally new life cycle of being a worker. It's also useful to try things out before committing to them. I think it should really be mandatory to do some sort of small work inside an industry prior to embarking on a long education. To get a taste. It sucks when people spend 4-8 years studying for a job only to realize a few months in that they hate it. People need to be able to back out and have exit strategies.
Anyway about children. Under capitalism, we must have laws about this or else they will be maximally exploited. The laws should be as high as possible. We should not allow any favoritism towards employers who hire kids, like a lower min wage.
When I think about young kids working, I am reminded from my own life that some children need to work to free themselves of their parents domination. When I was a young teenager, a couple of my acquaintances were working in the sex industry because they couldn't get work elsewhere, but they were queer and their parents were extremely abusive so they desired to be as independent as they could. But couldn't find legal work, especially not making enough money while still attending school. Obviously 14 year olds shouldn't be "escorts" (how these people described their jobs) but they need to have a way to escape.
Forgetting about niche situations, I think the age should be 16.
i feel like couple of hours informal job is whatever, allows to compare and contrast house chores as well as adult behavior in uncontrolled environment, but i feel like those cleaning of cities projects or collecting recyclable stuff in neighborhoods can serve similar role (floating working hours, doing something useful, having someone other than teacher or parents being your boss), shame those type of stuff by municipalities is kinda rare, and its usually schools doing it without compensation (i do shudder when i see someone too young in fastfood place tho, i guess formality of work/presence of uniform bothers me 
)
*late edit, this neatly fits into exploitation, hiring a person for unprofitable work (eg collecting recyclables) or helping with tree chopping is not exploitation (as there is no profit extracted), while job is. I wonder if it’s psyche sensing some inherent bullshit (the universal morals(tm)), or it just fits in my worldview, thus i’m attracted to marxism
I'm not against this per se, but I do ask myself this question, as someone who both did youth programs and worked as a teen:
Is it good to have kids be in a space where learning, socialization, and material and mental independence are incidental to the act of working? Or is it better for children to have access to spaces whose sole goal is to give you the same things without engaging in wage labor?
It's good to have some walk around money, and I learned a lot from doing odd jobs, but since we're describing the ideal, I'd rather have kids be developing and being kids in relative material comfort than that comfort be tied to whether you can or cannot work at that moment.
If i knew how much working sucked i would have tried harder in college
I dunno.
They shouldn't be working. But I understand that they have wants/needs of their own and they require money to get those things so wtf do we do?
I'm just a dumb guy so I don't have an answer.
Funny how rich people's kids never work
So I work in a retail shop in a fairly rich area and that's not true at all. Most of the teens at my job come from bougie as fuck families, they often pull up in nicer cars than mine and I'm their boss.
I guess rich kids parents want them paying for their Xbox games themselves too.
Damn guess I was wrong then
Maybe it's just bc everyone I knew growing up that worked was from working class families
Tbf I just didn't know that many rich people