That then raises the question of why they're paying time and a half to work their employees to death.

Exhausted employees have less time and energy to apply for better jobs, learn new skills, or organize. This reduces turnover. It also helps that some employees will develop health problems from overwork, and then they really won't be able to afford being without insurance.

Overtime may be cheaper than hiring another worker because then there are healthcare benefits and pension for one more head.

Does that equate to 50% of the base hourly pay?

Probably more. At 20/hr, salary is 40k per year. At my workplace employee overhead is >100k on top of salary, so 20k overhead seems verry low

Because they can get away with it and because of greed.

How would greed lead them to paying 40+ hours of time and a half OT instead of hiring another worker?

Companies tend to work (as we humans do) under the principle of least effort.

More employees means more HR work, more administrative work, more legal work, more work in general, and unless the benefits of hiring more people are great, they will just abuse the employees at hand.

Because it's cheaper to have fewer employees.

It's a self-feeding cycle.

First you need work two 10 hour shifts a day, 7 days a week to survive. Then you can't even study, because you can't afford it.

This is why proper unemployment and free schools (evil SOCIALISM) comes in to play. People don't need to work themselves to death just to survive, there are safety nets you can fall back on. (Yes there are holes in said nets, but it's better than the gaping black hole the US has).

I thought so as well, but then I started offering jobs to people I knew hated their jobs and also worked unpaid overtime constantly, with the smallest salaries. But for some reason, when offered a 6x salary freelancing, for less hours, with guidance, and the road paved as much as possible, everyone refuses.

Turns out there are people who take shitty jobs on purpose, out of a sense of... I don't know, fear, embarrassment, impostor syndrome, or a combination of them.

*This is not in the US.

Maybe they think the offer is too good to be true. In some countries it is default to assume everyone is out to scam you until proven otherwise.

They want something stable. Freelancing is not.

Kids, car, rent, healthcare = Need something stable

How many of these people had all of the necessary funds to fall back on should their foray into freelancing not go as planned?

Replying here to sibling posts' concerns as well.

All of them in this case did, with no families or major expenses to support, and not a weird scam or pyramid scheme, just standard contract development work where in two or three contractually secured months they'd make what they currently do in over a year. The reason is basically geographical, working for clients abroad is just ridiculously more profitable (think Venezuela).

The risk in this case is extremely low, I wasn't looking for referrals either (I'd offered to give it to them if there were any), just genuinely wanted my friends to earn more and work less.

Freelancing is how I broke out of the shit job loop. But freelancing is not widely available and I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to have been able to do it.