Americans are the most econ ignorant people on the planet, and that makes them prime targets for hucksters and con men. This has been institutionalized all the way up to our national monetary policy which is "designed" to keep workers in competition with each other. Politicians will tell you that we have to control GDP so it doesn't get out of hand and cause inflation, so they must adjust the interest rates to keep a "stock" of unemployed workers.
This is BS of course, and the purpose is to give employers the constant reassurance that hungry workers will be waiting to take the jobs of any who might demand more pay and benefits. The powers that be even went so far as to capture our primary source of healthcare insurance to make it even harder for workers to move between jobs or start their own business.
"Tax dollars prop up bad businesses"
This is true at the state and local level, but tax dollars do nothing at the federal level except remove currency/money from the private sector. The federal government is the monopoly issuer of the US dollar, so it never needs our dollars to enable its spending. If we want to place businesses on a more level playing field we would be wiser to simply eliminate "all" business taxation.
This would prevent the lobbyists from using politicians to carve out special treatment that favors one group or class of business over others. Let the taxation fall on investors in the business at the personal level where they have much less clout than their corporations. Business just treats taxes as another expense item and adds them into the prices we pay anyway, so taxing them is just shooting ourselves in the foot while giving them a way to beat their competition.
In making comparisons to workers in other countries it is important to remember that they also enjoy many benefits from the government that we would call "socialist", such as their healthcare, a lot more time off, state furnished childcare, education for their children, etc. on top of much higher pay. The American dream exists, but it relocated to Denmark and Norway.
