> necessary for whom?

Do you know that it wasn't until 1800 or so, and only in the US, where the ever-present spectre of famine was eliminated? Economies simply were unable to produce enough food. It wasn't that the rich were eating it all. There just wasn't enough food.

Which means it's all hands on deck to work. Other problems were it was very expensive to produce cloth, so for people to get clothing, lots and lots and LOTS of people were needed in the textile industry.

> Do you know that it wasn't until 1800 or so, and only in the US, where the ever-present spectre of famine was eliminated? Economies simply were unable to produce enough food. It wasn't that the rich were eating it all. There just wasn't enough food.

There's no way to sugarcoat it - this is completely false. There were many regions around the world that were prosperous, many for far longer than the United States has been around. Humans have been smart for a long time, far longer than our current global technological civilization... [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_China_befo... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_world [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Mongol_Empire [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece#Economy [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_economy [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Ottoma... [9] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blighted-by-empire-what-... [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_economy#History [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt#Government_and_e... [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_agriculture [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation#Matu... [14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia#History [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs#Economy [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Inca_Empire

Sarcasm: until we had publicly funded schools, what else was the urban working class going to do with their children all day long? Putting them to work made sense in a "making the ends meet" sort of way.

Talking about this stuff really makes people drop their masks.

How many children should we use to grease the wheels of capital accumulation? How good is this system if that’s what it requires.

I recommend you take a tour of a reconstruction of an 1800-era dwelling and have a good hard look at how people lived.

I toured Mt Vernon recently (George Washington's estate). He was probably the richest man in America at the time. You and I live better than he did.

You seem to think there was all this wealth sloshing around at the time. Nope.

I think you’re fine with letting 8 year olds die in a mill, letting normal people have their meaningless lives of working 80 hours a week for little to no money, just to survive, while robber barons live in gilded mansions and build a new solid house out of marble every year to impress their rich friends.

The inequality you’re pitching only ends in one place.

And kids had summers off from school not for "vacation", but to work the farms.

Something like 97% of the population worked on the farms in those days trying to raise enough food.

Do you know that women in America use to spend all day in the kitchen managing the wood stove, which was very labor intensive? Any free time they had was spent spinning, weaving, sewing, and mending.

Gas/electric stoves are modern miracles, as are sewing machines, electric refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers, all sorts of liberating machinery. And most especially, indoor plumbing! Who do you think ran out to the town well constantly to pump a pail of water?

Have you ever wondered why, as productivity increased, the number of children per family decreased? This happens consistently in country after country.