Income they didn't have before the job either. They don't end up worse off than they were without the job. When people refer to the business owner assuming the risk, they mean you start out in the red and have expenses to pay before you get anything. You could make good money, or you could make less than you owe and work with nothing to show for it.
Yes and many businesses fail but people don't need owners to do work. Owners need workers to make money and if their business succeeds they continue to make lots of money while doing a smaller and smaller share of the labor. That is a pyramid distribution and in the US at least it's been increasing for several decades. I've never worked anywhere where the owner/managers were wholly necessary for the day-to-day. Not to say there aren't decisions don't that need to be make nor logistics to take care of but no one gets exorbitantly wealthy purely of their own accord and when you dig into say, the Bezos' and Musk's of the world there's often a lot of favorable circumstance and family money that went into them even being able to take such risks. Once that ship is off the ground the income distribution keeps going to the top regardless of amount of work those folks are actually doing at that point (which isn't to say none of them work hard, some definitely do, but when you look at the income gaps between say, CEOs and their workers it reeeaaally makes you start to ask a few questions).
When the layoffs occurred in 2008 it was the people doing the work who lost their jobs, and yes, that has consequences, there is great risk in being working class. The, we'll call it, "managerial class" was largely unaffected. Where's all the risk besides the initial investment? It's all upside after that. All the richest people got richer in the last three years and when their business/bank is big enough, they can be, "too big to fail", meanwhile Debbie and Jimmy
maybe get unemployment and people bitching that they're entitled. When there's hardship it's the workers who sufferh; owners, capitalists, don't typically lay themselves off. It's like a casino, the house always wins. Once you get to a certain level of money and power the risk for your actions diminishes the higher up the pyramid you go. And, of course, the oligarchs deflect to those with no money and no power and we complain about welfare queens or whatever.
There's some videos where billionaires admit the grift and say the quiet part out loud, like how there needs to be a certain amount of unemployment to keep a level of desperation among the working class so they can suppress wages, because, ya know, they don't have enough goddamn money.
But, it's fine. Greed eventually eats itself and as the working class deteriorates we'll see where this little experiment goes. When things get lopsided enough society destabilizes. We have enough distractions and just enough comfort and division. For meow.
All that said, I don't hate all business owners nor think they're lazy, many are very industrious, at least to a point, but employees absolutely do take risks working for them. We see it every time the economy tanks or someone comes home crying cuz they're burned out but need the benefits of their job but work in hell.
