I may be completely off base here, but with the exception of gas money in suburbs, I imagine that most of the income from jobs performed by people in high school is discretionary income spent on entertainment (because food and housing are still provided by someone's parents). Now I know this is not universally true, especially in low income communities, but I imagine that loss of discretionary income among this segment of society is adequately replaced by cheap or free internet content.

I would even suggest that society shouldn't even worry too much about the loss of discretionary income that is mostly being spent on goods whose price is falling together with the loss in purchasing power for those goods.

Another benefit is that said teenagers learn how to hold a job when failure may not be as expensive as it will be later.

These kids earn disposable income and dispose of it. It's safe to assume that a fair portion of this demographics disposable income is disposed of at their local theatre, whilst simultaneously providing most of the staff there too.

If these kids can no longer dispose of their income at the theatre, then it's safe to assume they'll quickly find somewhere else to dispose of their money. These other locals will receive a boost in business and require hiring more staff, possibly extending shifts into the times when young adults are more prevalent rather than closing at 8pm.

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.

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.

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?