westfw:
The simulator reports 13.5 mA at the LED and 430 ?A at the base for an hFE of 32.
No, no. hFE is a characteristic of the transistor, not the overall circuit. You're looking at the current gain of the circuit.
A major point of designing a transistor circuit is that you minimize the effects of variations in the characteristics of the transistors, since they can vary quite a bit. So Rbase is chosen to limit the current in the base/emitter circuit, and Rled is chosen to limit the current in the LED through the Collector/Emitter circuit, and everything will work just swell as long as hFE is "much larger" than Ic/Ib
Excellent description of the situation.