oh I agree it's always better to be a job-creator than a job-filler. But the bulk of our workforce are not that, and our history has never been one where the vast majority are entrepreneurs.
It's a $16 trillion behemoth which requires a hell of a lot of job-fillers to make the gears turn. The job-fillers having decent wages and access to home and colllege loans is why we even had the largest and most robust middle class in economic history.
And Frankly, being a job-creator or entrepreneur is a special quality that very few have naturally and fewer still are successful with. A lesson some learned the hard way very recently and found their one time job-creator status involuntary switched to job-filler (at the minimum wage). After which the bank then told them "sorry credit is tight I can't give you a second loan to start your next business". Have you seen the state of subprime today, some five years after the debacle? Non-existent. Turns out you can't securitize risky loans (as many start up loans are) after everyone fell for it the first time around. If you look at employment trends since the 1970's you'll see that successful job-creators are not nearly enough in numbers to keep job growth (relative to population growth) from falling with each decade, along with nearly stagnant household net worth and stagnant wages in the last decade. This country's labor force needs are far greater than the limited number of job creators who find scuccess can provide to a an economy of this scale. Unfortunately with so much manufacturing going offshore, these service jobs at very low hourly rates have become a necessary evil and reality all in one.
And some corporations are definitely taking advantage of the workforce. Sorry, while I completely agree that most are responsible for their own poor choices and are currently paying the price but that doesn't mean some of these corporations aren't using the imbalance in available workers to limited jobs to their advanatage (while passing off living expenses that keep their workers out of poverty levels to the tax payers). It's not a binary issue where you can only blame one side of the coin -- if you do, it becomes a political argument that ignores economic reality. Whever there is a person in life prone to making mistakes, there is an actor looking to take advantage. If its kept between the two (worker and employer) fine. But once the tax payer is roped in, as will always be the case in a mininum wage regime with safety net programs (and I can't think of one major economy doesn't have both) then it's not just a matter between employer and low-wage worker anymore. Either abolish minimum wage and food stamp assistance totally (good luck with that, even conservative states haven't done away with them) or require these minimum wage corporate employers to pay more. being in the ineffective middle is never going to work.
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