During a speech at Harvard University’s Kennedy School on Friday evening, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich attacked child labor laws and proposed that public school janitors should be replaced by children in order to help solve the income gap in America and break unions (video below).

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said, reported Politico.com.“Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.”

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“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor,” he said. “You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model,” he said. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

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At the beginning of his speech, Gingrich was mic checked by some Occupy Boston protesters: “We love you Newt, thank you for standing up for corporations. Thank you for understanding that simple point. We are, the 99 percent.”

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