Do you employ anyone? Didn’t think so. I don’t employ anyone either, but I have never been under the illusion that businessmen who do hire people, do so to “pay for middle class lifestyles and support families.” They do so to get things done that they can’t or wish not to do themselves. Typically because they can make more money, net of wages than they can without hiring the employee(s).Now, in reality that consideration tends to lose some of it force relative to “paying for middle class lifestyles and supporting families” of friends who are long-time employees. Concomitant to maintaining the prestige of the owner of the company. But even so, that has its limits . . .
Not currently, but have in the past.
So you tell me, bubba: why does the businessman go into business? So he can write a book about it someday?
Or is it to feed and house himself and his family?
And every employee is not a businessman themselves? They are selling their time and their skills to a bidder, and there are various levels of contracts that go along with that.
If not, why bother leaving the farm?
It's the central issue for industrial economies: if such an economy doesn't serve the interests of the population, why would they keep it around?
The entire "civil war" was fought over this, not race: it was about the wages of Northerners and who they would have to compete against. Slave wages are hard to beat.
No one that I know is going to fight to the death to defend Apple Computer's Foxconn workers in China since I don't live in China. Let me know when you're willing to die for a foreign corporation because that's what Apple is now.