This is a long thread and I admit I did not read in detail beyond the first page or so, so apologies if my response here is redundant with others.

Let us briefly contemplate the life of Nashon Zimba, a twenty-five-year-old man who lives with his wife and baby daughter in Malawi. There is no question that Mr. Zimba is a hardworking man. He built his own home, as The Economist describes: He digs up mud, shapes it into cuboids and then dries it in the sun to make bricks. He mixes his own cement, also from mud. He cuts branches to make beams, and thatches the roof with sisal or grass. His only industrial input is the metal blade on his axe. Working on his own, while at the same time growing food for his family, Mr. Zimba has erected a house that is dark, cramped, cold in the winter, steamy in summer and has running water only when tropical storms come through the roof.1 For all that work, Mr. Zimba is a poor man. His cash income in 2000 was roughly $40. He is hardly alone. Malawian GDP per capita was less than $200 at the time that story was written. Even today, the nation’s entire annual economic output is only about $12 billion—or about half the size of Vermont’s economy. Lest anyone naively believe that there is something pleasantly simple about this existence, it should be pointed out that 30 percent of young children in Malawi are malnourished; more than two of every ten children will die before they reach their fifth birthday. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, there are a billion people in the world who don’t get enough to eat. The vast majority are in the developing world; roughly half are in India and China. How is that possible? At a time when we can split the atom, land on the moon, and decode the human genome, why do 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day?2 The short answer is that their economies have failed them. At bottom, creating wealth is a process of taking inputs, including human talent, and producing things of value. Poor economies are not organized to do that.

Wheelan, Charles (2010-04-19). Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated) (Kindle Locations 4971-4981). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.


"Employment" is not the issue; Mr. Zimba clearly is fully "employed", yet he lives a tough life, in relative squalor, with little to show for his hard work.  Standard of living is the critical issue.  Because of capitalism + the invisible hand, the poor in the USA, even without any sort of government subsidies, can work 40 hours/week and live 100 x as well as Mr. Zimba -- they can do yard work, or cooking, or wash cars, or any number of tasks that are simply not possible to outsource to China, India, or technology any time in the foreseeable future -- and they can still easily afford a modest apartment, a cheap but reliable car, a big plasma TV, xbox, netflix, and public parks.  This is absolute luxury compared to how even the wealthiest nobles from just a few hundred years ago lived.

Liberals focus a lot on "employment", but they miss the point:  The goal is in fact to work as little as possible, yet reap the highest rewards -- the standard of living:work ratio.  And that today in the USA is the highest it has ever been anywhere in the history of the world.  Government subsidies -- minimum wage, welfare, food stamps, etc. -- they give fish rather than teach to fish -- and thus distort incentives and the market, and ultimately lead to a lower SOL:work ratio.