@TC - " I also have no doubt you have never created a job and paid the salary, benefits, and taxes out of the profits of a business you owned in your life."

Salary, benefits (as agreed to in the hirign agreement), and taxes don't come out of profit. Profit is what is left after they are paid. They are operating expenses, as you well know. If you consider the money you pay your workers to be profit they are taking, then you have the wrong approach. Your employees are your greatest asset in *any* business and their costs are no different than the upkeep on the equipment or the rent/mortgage on the building your business occupies. Please don't consider their costs as lost profit, for without them you'd have never made the money to begin with.

I'll put it to you this way. As a partner in a consulting firm that does subcontracting to other consulting firm when we aren't free to do the work ourselves, We charge X per hour for the job. The subcontractor (usually an independent) charges Y per hour (less than X). X pe rhour isn't our profit. X-Y per hour is. Why? Because without the independent subcontractor, there would be no hours to bill X per hour for.