I think the biggest problem you have that you are not understanding is that you are poisoning the talent pool in your businesses by starting off with low pay.
If your entry level employees are idiots because you do not pay enough for the starting wage, then you only have a pool of idiots to choose from to promote to the next position up and this continues in a domino effect and then you do not have good people to run your companies. You need to fill the entry level of your funnel with good employees because these are the people who will get promoted to the other levels in your company. You are just too short sighted to realize this.