Apparently, there is no space for empathy in the hollowed heart of the modern businessman or woman. Well, at least this has become the case for the overly adulated hero or heroine that has escaped the clutches of poverty, climbed the ladder of success and achieved the “American Dream.”

But these stories have run their course and fallen into a state of cliche — let’s do away with them. The fact of the matter is that for every winner, there are many more losers — and most of those losers, by sheer accident of their birth, never had the opportunity to succeed in the first place.

The disadvantaged and under-resourced should be our primary concern. An increase of the minimum wage, for starters, would help to raise roughly 4.6 million people above the poverty line. That would help to make the “American Dream” actually possible.

Not everybody shares that sentiment. For instance, Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association, wrote an opinion piece, published March 18 by the Des Moines Register, in opposition to Sen. Tom Harkin’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10.

Dunker argues that the minimum wage serves as a starting point for those entering the workforce, and it should not be raised to a point that would allow a person to make a “career” out of washing dishes.

What person finds washing dishes at $10.10 per hour to be an ideal job, anyway?

If those living on minimum wages — we should place more emphasis on “living” — really are at the cusp of an illustrious career, they must have entered the game late.

The stereotypical teen employee does not represent the minimum wage workforce. As David Cooper and Dan Essrow at the Economic Policy Institute have noted, the average age of a worker affected by a minimum wage increase is about 35 years old. 56 percent of the affected workers are women, 28 percent of which have children.

Many of those people are living below the poverty line. Although minimum wage may not be the most direct way to reduce poverty, it should be considered in combination with food stamps and the earned income tax credit.

More so, and even more compelling, is the fact that minimum wage has consistently fallen behind inflation, despite Americans working much harder than their foreign counterparts. In essence, the minimum wage employee is working harder but has less buying power then he or she did in 1968.

As Sen. Harkin has valiantly argued, this modest proposal would help to numb the tribulations of poverty. It not only makes economic sense, but it is also a moral imperative.

Yet there are those who still blatantly protest, as if raising the minimum wage is some radical idea. The minimum wage has been raised dozens of times since the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act under Franklin D. Roosevelt. The idea is hardly something new — and if it really was as apocalyptic as some have claimed, our economy would not be leading the world right now.

Dunker continues her piece by scaring the consumer onto her side. She asserts that a minimum wage hike would result in job loss. This job loss, at least in the restaurant industry, would result in an insufferable consumer experience.

As she states, among other things, “No one will bring you a drink — you will do that yourself. Fewer busers. You may clear your own table.” Those are improbable hypotheticals and just plain economic suicide for an industry characterized as “service.”

Also, business owners too often forget the idea that one’s income is also another’s income. After an aggregate wage increase, an employee at McDonald’s, for example, would have more to spend at Wal-Mart, and an employee at Wal-Mart would have more to spend at McDonald’s.

The argument that the minimum wage hike would reduce employment is inconclusive, but evidence suggests that the effect is slim to none. A wage hike to say $25, however, would be catastrophic, but the broad understanding among economists is that the harm posed by a modest increase is very minimal.

Why is this the case? Economist Paul Krugman compellingly argues that it is because workers aren’t just bushels of wheat — they’re human beings, and “the human relationships involved in hiring and firing are inevitably more complex than markets for mere commodities.”

Therein lies the moral imperative. We are all human beings, and as our solidarity has proven, we care about one another. I side with Harkin because he encourages a realistic approach to alleviating suffering rather than throwing out ingratiating and pseudo-genuine remarks.

Perhaps there is refuge for empathy in the world of capitalism after all. That or we can make room.