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Exhausted employees have less time and energy to apply for better jobs, learn new skills, or organize. This reduces turnover. It also helps that some employees will develop health problems from overwork, and then they really won't be able to afford being without insurance.

Overtime may be cheaper than hiring another worker because then there are healthcare benefits and pension for one more head.

Does that equate to 50% of the base hourly pay?

Probably more. At 20/hr, salary is 40k per year. At my workplace employee overhead is >100k on top of salary, so 20k overhead seems verry low

Because they can get away with it and because of greed.

How would greed lead them to paying 40+ hours of time and a half OT instead of hiring another worker?

Companies tend to work (as we humans do) under the principle of least effort.

More employees means more HR work, more administrative work, more legal work, more work in general, and unless the benefits of hiring more people are great, they will just abuse the employees at hand.

Because it's cheaper to have fewer employees.