I respectfully disagree. I house a nephew, 19, in an urban area, from a rural background to give him the opportunity to go to school and establish roots out of the backwoods.
Without an entry level job, he would have no way to pay for community college and commuting- as the pell grants and available loans are simply insufficient. Even with free room and board.
I'll chime here as being in a similar boat as your nephew was.
Nearly 15 years ago I took a job at the local Wal-Mart as a high-school sophomore (15 1/2 was the minimum required age, with restrictions on hours worked), mostly so I could save up enough money to buy my own computer, or enough fairly recent parts to build something respectable. To my parents this was preferable to me hitching a ride with high school seniors in the computer club to go dumpster diving every weekend for 386s in the back of colleges, company headquarters, and landfills. Though to be honest, it yielded quite a respectable stack of working computers.
I used the computer I built from my Wal-Mart money (Pentium 200MHz with 64MB of RAM) to learn how to program, enough about relational databases, and create dynamic websites (we're talking mid-90s here), so in my latter half of high school I was building basic e-commerce sites for larger local companies to save up tuition money to go to a state college and not have to take out loans. And to play games, of course.
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Granted, I think most of the kids I worked with mostly spent their money on music, movies and fast food, and didn't show up when they didn't need spending money. Or to hook up with their coworkers (Kim from the shoe department, leave me alone!). I ended up taking care of 1/3rd of the store floor myself, which really ticked them off when I quit.
I completely agree about 15 years ago. But you can now get a Raspberry Pi for about $30.
Is it the latest and greatest iOS or Android device? No. But it is a platform for exploring, learning and being entertained.
A question to you that I've asked myself, would you rather have less buying power today and access to the Internet in its current form or more buying power and access to the Internet 15 years ago?
Without an entry level job, he would have no way to pay for community college and commuting- as the pell grants and available loans are simply insufficient. Even with free room and board.