I am not saying that people belong to a business but reflecting upon how in an environment where there is a limited supply of labour (eg full employment) businesses will compete against each other in order access this labour. This competition is what causes wages to increase. This is good for the workers but what happens if you are not in full employment or the skill level of the job is easily replaced with technology if the workers ask for more money. They still have street sweepers in Ukraine but in Canada they have sidewalk sweeping machines replacing a dozens of workers for a single one who is more skilled (can drive the equipment). Minimum wage creates an artificial price level which either causes businesses to fairly pay their employees or to innovate and hire more skilled labour.
I used Ukraine as an example because they are a highly educated population roughly the same size as Canada but their average wage is 1/10 the rate in Canada. The average income in Ukraine expressed in CAD is $321.99 vs $3,166.71. The mortgage interest rate in Ukraine is 21.03% while in Canada it is 2.99%.
Because labour is so cheap, employers have little regard for their employees. However consider a product such as a bottle of Coke. In Ukraine it costs $0.56 CAD while in Canada it costs $2.03 CAD. They could double the minimum wage in Ukraine and while it might cause the price of commodities to rise, (what is Coke a few pennies worth of sugar and flavouring) it would not rise to Canada's price which has wages 10 times.
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Canada has admittedly more "government" than the US. When I was a child I first visited the US. What struck me was the poverty of the country. This was because I looked at the state of your roads. The line about the streets in US are paved in gold is sadly mistaken. I think they are paved in potholes. How can any person start the day with resolution and optimism it they open their door and step into poverty. When I visited Costa Rica (a really laissez faire government), its central highway was in poorer condition than our rural roads.
As far as people realizing that children are an inefficient labour force ... 4.7 million or 12.6% of children aged 5 to 14 in the work force in Bangladesh.

I admit your government needs to be changed. Your incarceration rate is just wrong. However that is actually a symptom of how "capitalism" has become to extreme in your country. You have corporations take over the management of prisons. You have corporations which create fear in people so they feel they have to buy guns. A reason society would adopt measures which would prevent the problems before they happen... Why do people steal? They steal because there is a disparity in the society which puts insuperable barriers for the lowest to rise honestly.
It isn't that "governments" are inherently bad. It is the people who are attracted to power and influence the running of government to cause it to become corrupted.
Take Belarus which is a country a country exactly opposite to what you would like. The difference is that its president (could be called a dictator) Alexander Lukashenko has been in power since 1994.
You would need around 1,808.78$ in Minsk to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 5,200.00$ in Chicago, IL (assuming you rent in both cities).