Longer-term payoff is meaningless when you can't meet your short-term goal of eating.
Are you serious? You could find more money on the floor than work at a job like that.
Of course we call places that pay like that sweatshops.
Let's just start paying people in company scrip.
I feel like your view is the sort of a "paying your dues" view, but the people I know that take off quick find something substantive to do, learn a lot very quickly, and are off doing something better in rapid iterative succession. The strategy you're advocating sounds like a very long runway before takeoff.
It's on-the-job training. Whether it happens quickly depends on the industry.
And the current employment problem doesn't revolve about well spoken people who regularly read tech blogs. The unemployed are disproportionately young, make, and under-educated. I'm saying a feasible way to get the retrained is to make it easier for them to find an occupation in booming industries.
We need to get the point where employers can think, "Why not? Let's give him a shot and ramp up his salary if he's any good." when an unproven young guy applies for a job. Right now, that doesn't make any sense because hiring him is too expensive. So you get situations where they give fewer hours to avoid providing expensive benefits, etc.
> There is very little opportunity to grow beyond the entranceway.
That was just an example. Nobody would show up to flip burgers for $0.25 an hour unless they saw a longer-term payoff down the road.
They might take a job doing menial work for little-to-nothing while they learn the ins and outs of a business and eventually apply for a more substantive role. We could call them 'apprentices'.