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We must ensure that while eliminating child labor in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public scrutiny - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation.

The American government policy on what we supported and subsidised in agriculture was a social experiment on a whole generation of children.

The concept of doing something with child benefit, of changing the rules around child benefit, is something that has been being discussed for some time.

We need to shift from an economic organizing principle for human civilization, to a humanitarian organizing principle. Making money more important than your own children is a pathological way for an individual to run their affairs, and it's a pathological way for a society to run its affairs.

Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems.

It's hard to bring up your children on benefit. It's easier if you can do part- time work, or even full-time work, and actually have a better standard of living, and that's the direction in which we are going.

On the other hand, I think that the family, the traditional family, has a fundamental social role, because it's there that children are born and the investment in children is the greatest investment a country can make. The benefits of this investment go to everyone.

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

Getting a family into work, supporting strong relationships, getting parents off drugs and out of debt - all this can do more for a child's well-being than any amount of money in out-of-work benefits.

The problem is, we live in a society where all that interests us is power and money. So we don't have any interest in our children, and what we leave for our children is not important.